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COLLECTION 


OF 


WILLIAM H. FULLER 


COLLECTION ~ 
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Pe FULLER 


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EARLY ENGLISH aM 


AND 


BARBIZON PAINTINGS 


BELONGING TO 


WILLIAM H. FULLER 


TO BE SOLD AT PUBLIC SALE 


AT CHICKERING HALL 


ON PRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 25TH 


INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURES BY 


FRANK D. MILLET, N.A. 


THOMAS E. KIRBY WILL CONDUCT THE SALE 


AMERICAN ART ASSOCIATION, MANAGERS 
NEW YORK 


1898 


4 ay, 
rl 


SKETETIES: = 


OF THE 


ARTISTS REPRESENTED 


THEODORE ROUSSEAU. 
(1812—1867.) 


THE tale of the Fontainebleau-Barbizon painters has 
been more than twice told, and like all tales it grows with 
each new telling. Originally it was a simple and a most 
natural story. There had been a long period of classic art, 
started by David, which perpetuated nothing but the tradi- 
tions of Greece and Rome. It was all form, all line, all 
academic skill; the breath of passion, of individuality, of 
life was not init. In the 1820's there came a revolt against 
this stereotyped product of the Institute. The revolt took 
the form of Romanticism, and Delacroix was its nominal 
prophet. Of course Romanticism perched itself on the far 
end of the controversial see-saw. If Ingres did the Classic, 
Delacroix had to rush off to the Gothic; if one used line 
with rigid harshness and decried color, the other had to 
ignore line and use the whole gamut of color in flat patches; 
if Classicism perpetuated the abstract and the objective, 
Romanticism had to balance it by outbreaks of personal 
impulse—by the fires and furies of passion. These ex- 
tremes never met, the controversy and the quarrel were 
never settled. The parties were both right so far as they 
went, but neither of them mirrored the life of the people, 
neither of them produced an art that had a root in con- 
temporary French thought or sentiment, neither of them 
pictured the time, the clime, and the race. 

A new generation was growing up while this Classic- 


Romantic jangle was in the air. These young men had 
heard the arguments pro and con in the studios, and had 
seen the extravagances of both arts in the exhibitions. 
What could be more natural than their recognition that 
both of them were extreme, and that the soul of the world 
lay neither in the Institute nor in Delacroix’s atelier, but in 
nature? What could be more natural in the young land- 
scape painters than the rejection of both points of view 
and the flight to the forest of Fontainebleau for inspira- 
tion? We have been told that their eyes were turned to 
nature by seeing the works of Constable, Bonington, and 
Fielding in the Salon of 1824. It is possible; but at that 
time Rousseau and Dupré were each twelve years old, 
Daubigny was seven, Diaz was sixteen, Corot was in Rome. 
Moreover, there was no journeying to Fontainebleau until 
about 1833. Jules Bréton has said they were influenced 
by the Dutch pictures in the Louvre, and there was un- 
doubtedly some study there. Out of Paris they took only 
a method, a way of doing things, whether derived from 
English, Dutch, or French sources or all combined is of no 
consequence now. It was from the forest that they got the 
material and the spirit of their art. The light, the air, the 
skies, the foliage, the forms of tree and rock and hill gave 
them their sentiment and their omnipresent love of nature. 
It was not studio nature that these men found. The world 
of sight is neither classic nor romantic; it is simply natural. 
The forest taught them this. It was on the edge of the 
forest that they lived, studied, and painted; and it is there, 
near the great rocks and oaks he so dearly loved to paint, 
that Rousseau now lies buried. 

Rousseau was the Akela of the pack, the leader and the 
strongest painter of them all. Indeed, there is no word 
that seems to describe Rousseau so well as “strength.” 
He was devoted to the fundamental, the basic, the perma- 
nent. Toward the close of his life he did little more than 


draw, so intent was he upon the underlying forms of things. 
His conception of the earth seemed to circle about its 
structure, its vast ages of existence, its endurance, its un- 
broken solidity. Not the great sturdy oak fastening itself 
in the fissures of the stratified rock alone, not the bulk and 
scope of hills and mountains alone; but the permanence of 
the blue sky and the clouds, the binding strength of atmos- 
phere, the power of falling sunlight,—these were the things 
he loved and studied. He was not blind to the minor 
beauties of the world, such as the effects of light and color 
on foliage, water, and skies. He was a man of infinite 
scope, but back of light and color, back of surface effect, 
lay the fundamental and the universal—the firm basing of 
the earth. oy he 

A man possessed of such a mind and view, possessed of 
a skilful hand, and with Fontainebleau forest for a model, 
could not but produce a strong art. For the first time in 
the history of French landscape the mirror was held up to 
nature. But the reflection was not the exact counterpart 
of the original. No great painter ever tries to show the 
facsimile, and Rousseau’s art was nature—plus an individu- 
ality. He had a sentiment about form, light, color, air, 
that can be felt in every one of his pictures. He saw truly 
enough, but he saw something more than the bare prosaic 
facts. Nature was a great poem to him, and all his life he 
was endeavoring to interpret it. His study was enormous, 
his labor prodigious; and yet his completed canvases are 
not so numerous asthose of his fellow painters at Barbizon. 
Like Leonardo with his portrait of Mona Lisa, Rousseau 
was never satisfied with his work. He kept pictures for 
months, touching, retouching, patting, caressing them with 
the brush, trying to better them in every way. And this 
was not because he lacked in skill, but because he could 
never fully interpret the vision of truth he saw in the well. 

Technically he had a very sure knowledge of form, and, 


though not always insisting upon detail, he was always in- 
sisting upon accuracy. Asa draftsman he was excellent, 
as everyone knows who has seen his drawings of tree forms. 
He drew everything first, that the skeleton might be cor- 
rect ; then he added stratum upon stratum of colors, gradu- 
ally building up, rounding and completing his effect until 
the desired result was reached. And this without mechan- 
ism or dryness. It has been truly said that his landscapes 
are as full of sap as nature itself. He was just as accurate 
and truthful in his observation of light. It was something 
that to him was as omnipresent as the air—one of the great 
fundamentals that revealed the splendor of the world. Asa 
colorist he had great range—and great grasp. He ran over 
the whole gamut, painting in bright keys as well as sombre 
ones, and always producing a unity—a massing and a fus- 
ing of all the notes into one. His comprehension of whole- 
ness and entirety in landscape was remarkable. All his 
subjects—and their name is legion—reveal these qualities. 
Wood interiors, marshes with cattle, vast plains with groups 
of stalwart oaks bedded in rock, mountains, rivers, sunsets, 
were all seen with a largeness of vision and as a part of 
the universal whole. His versatility in theme and motive 
was a wonder to his friends and his admirers. A painter 
like Corot, who had but one sweet note, could only gasp: 
“ Rousseau Cest un aigle. Quant é mot, Je ne suis qu'une 
alouette qui pousse de petites chansons dans mes nuages gris.”’ 
And Rousseau was an eagle. He was ever viewing the 
earth from a lofty height, seeing and painting mountain, 
plain, forest, and river—painting them each year of his life 
in a different istyle.- He had twoumsnne of working, 
between which he alternated at different periods of his life. 
The first was detailed and minute in drawing; the second 
was broad, full, and apparently quite free. His public 
rather favored the first manner, though the amateurs were 
shocked that his landscapes were green instead of studio- 


brown. The broader manner was only appreciated by a 
few artists and critic friends. In both manners he was 
honest and straightforward, never shirking a difficulty or 
trying by chic to hide a fault. Seeking the truth of nature 
all his life, he put down his observations with candor and 
with the simplicity that lends to strength. 

Posie Useless to repeat the story of. his life. It is 
common knowledge nowadays that he battled against odds, 
endured neglect and disappointment, and died practically 
unappreciated. It is small credit to human intelligence 
that pictures which were rejected at the Salon and declined 
by the amateurs now sell for enormous prices or are 
treasured in the art museums of every land. No land- 
scape painter before him ever equalled him, no landscape 
painter since his time has excelled him; yet it took the 
race many years to find that out. He went to the shades 
unsung. ‘ Rousseau c'est un aigle.’ Uonor to you, Pére 
Corot, for uttering that truth so early. 


CONSTANT TROYON. 
(1810—1865.) 


CONSTANT TROYON was born at Sévres in 1810. His 
father was connected with the government manufactory 
of porcelain at that place, and under his instruction the son 
began his artistic career as a decorator of china ware. By 
a happy coincidence for him, two unknown young men, 
named Narcisse Diaz and Jules Dupré, were also employed 
at Sévres in the same kind of work. Later on all three 
formed the acquaintance of Théodore Rousseau, anda bond 
of personal friendship and artistic sympathy was estab- 
lished between them which was terminated only by death. 

Unlike the early Dutch and Flemish painters, these 
young men belonged to no prosperous guild with its whole- 
some traditions and famous masters to aid them, nor did 
they obtain much of permanent value from the schools of 
their day. But what was far better, they became in a large 
and vital sense their own instructors; they pursued their 
own career with nature for their guide; and when they 
died, they left behind them few heirs of royal blood to 
question the sovereignty of their fame. 

To most of us at the present day Troyon is chiefly 
known as a great animal painter, especially of cattle and 
sheep. But it must not be forgotten that long before he 
began to paint animals he had won distinction as a land- 
scape painter. His career in this field of art was marked 
by success almost from the start. His first picture was 


exhibited in the Salon in 1832, when he was twenty-two 
years of age; three years later he received his first honor— 
a Medal of the Third Class; in 1839 the Museum at 
Amiens purchased his Salon picture; in 1840 he obtained 
a Medal of the Second Class; in 1846 a Medal of the First 
Class, besides having a picture bought for the Museum at 
Lille; finally, in 1849, he received his greatest public pre- 
ferment—the Cross of the Legion of Honor. All these 
honors, be it remembered, were awarded him before he had 
publicly exhibited an important picture of animal life, and 
were bestowed upon him for his excellence as a landscape 
painter alone. 

The year 1848 was the turning point in Troyon’s career, 
for in that year he visited Holland, and it is said found 
there his true field of painting. It certainly was not Paul 
Potter’s “ Young Bull’’ which determined him to become 
an animal painter, for he was not much impressed with 
that over-estimated picture; on the contrary, with his 
originality and temperament, he was far more likely to 
have been convinced by the sight of the large, fine cattle 
feeding in herds or lying in groups upon the low, out- 
stretched Holland meadows, their massive forms outlined 
against the grey northern sky. He had not been with- 
out personal solicitation to combine landscape and animal 
painting. Indeed, long before this Holland visit, his old 
friend, M. Louis Robert, an old employé of the manufac- 
tory at Sévres, had urged him to introduce animals into 
his pictures. So also another friend, M. Ad. Charropin, 
had given him, time and again, the same advice. Writing 
on this subject to M. Ph. Burty, the former says: ‘‘ Year 
after year I went with Troyon to Barbizon. . . . On 
rainy days, when we were unable to sketch in the forest, 
we visited the farms where the watchers of cattle and the 
tenders of geese posed as our models; more often still to 
the stables, where we painted the animals. Here Troyon 


executed the most charming things in the world; and from 
1846 to 1848 I constantly implored him to introduce them 
into his landscapes.” 

Troyon’s exhibit in the Salon of 1849 did not disclose 
any important animal painting, as might have been ex- 
pected upon his return from Holland, but it did contain a 
landscape which clearly revealed the influence of the great 
Rembrandt in the magical rendering of light and shade. 
It was the famous “ Windmill,” of which Théophile Gautier 
wrote: 

“Tt is the early morning. The sun struggles dimly amid 
the enveloping mist; the wind rises; then the huge old 
frame, with worm-eaten planks, begins to creak with regular 
throbs, like the beatings of the heart, as the great mem- 
branous wings stretch themselves in silhouette against the 
pale splendor of the dawn.’”’ It was this picture which 
marked the culmination of his success thus far in landscape 
art, and made Troyon Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. 

If Troyon cared for academic rewards, he certainly had 
received his full share. As we have seen, in the short space 
of seventeen years he had won every medal of the Salon 
save one, and to these distinctions had been added, as we 
have seen, the Cross of the Legion of Honor; and yet, not- 
withstanding all this, and although he was forty years old, 
he had not publicly begun his real career. When in fact he 
entered upon it, splendidly equipped as he was, there 
unfortunately remained to him before his death, the too 
brief space of only fifteen years in which to create the 
manifold wonders of his brush—only fifteen years in which 
to live a new life in art and establish his true place among 
the master painters of the world. 

With what increased delight, therefore, he must have 
painted when he felt that he had found his true vocation, 
and realized that he was about to reach a greater success 
than he had heretofore attained! To secure absolute 


mastery of his subject, he spent no less than eight consecu- 
tive summers at the country place of a friend, making 
beautiful studies of running dogs, which he subsequently 
employed in his picture, ‘““The Return from the Chase.” 
In like manner he made superb studies of sheep and cattle. 
A friend of his relates how Troyon, after his return in 1855 
from a sketching tour in Touraine, showed him what seemed 
an almost endless collection of great, splendid studies of 
cattle, most of which were, indeed, finished pictures; and 
when he expressed astonishment at their number and 
beauty, Troyon quietly remarked: ‘I have made as many 
as eighteen in a month.” 

Troyon excelled in painting a variety of animals, as dogs, 
sheep, and even barnyard fowls, but he excelled most as a 
painter of cattle. Nor was it merely their outward forms 
that he portrayed. He had a realizing sense of their char- 
acter, their habits, their life, as the willing servants of man. 
To us, those heavy-yoked oxen, with bent necks and meas- 
ured tread, dragging the plough along the furrows, are liv- 
ing, breathing creatures; and those great awkward cows 
lazily resting their heavy bodies on the ground, and con- 
tentedly chewing their cud, are absolutely so alive, that an 
expert could tell at a glance how much they weigh; and 
the spectator almost fears that a near approach may bring 
them slowly to their feet, and that they may walk out of 
the canvas. Ina word, “ His cattle have the heavy step, 
the philosophical indolence, the calm resignation, the vague- 
ness of look, which are the characteristics of their race.” 

In these last and best years of his life Troyon never neg- 
lected his landscapes, even when the dominant motive of 
his picture was some expression or movement of animal 
life. He saw his landscape and his cattle as a pictorial 
whole, just as we ourselves behold them in nature, and the 
prominence that he gave to either depended upon his per- 
sonal point of view. The result was that his success was 


immediate and complete, and his pictures made a delight- 
ful impression on every observer, whether artist, connoisseur, 
or child. 

In concluding this brief sketch of this master, I can do 
no better than to quote the opinion of a well-known writer 
on art, Mr. William Ernest Henley, who sums up his 
estimate of Troyon in these appreciative and convincing 
words: 

‘“‘He had the true pictorial sense, and if his lines are often 
insignificant and ill-balanced, his masses are perfectly pro- 
portioned, his values are admirably graded, his tonality is 
faultless, his effect is absolute incompleteness. His method 
is the large, serene, and liberal expression of great crafts- 
manship; and with the interest and the grace of art his 
color unites the charm of individuality, the richness and 
the potency of a natural force. His training in landscape 
was varied and severe; and when he came to his right work 
he applied its results with almost inevitable assurance and 
tact. He does not sentimentalize his animals, nor concern 
himself with the drama of their character and gesture. He 
takes them as components in a general scheme; and he 
paints them as he has seen them in Nature—enveloped in 
atmosphere and light, and in an environment of grass and 
streams and living leafage. His work is not to take the 
portraits of trees, or animals, or sites, but as in echoes of 
Virgilian music to suggest and typify the country, with its 
tranquil meadows, its luminous skies, its quiet waters, and 
that abundance of flocks and herds, at once the symbol and 
the source of its prosperity.” 


JULES DUPRE. 
(1812—1889.) 


IT seems only yesterday that Jules Dupré died, and yet 
he and Rousseau were the moving spirits who started the 
Fontainebleau School far back in the 1830’s. He alone of 
the original group lived to see the work of the school 
appreciated—lived to see Rousseau acclaimed a prince and 
Millet crowned. He was born in the same year with Rous- 
seau, met him early, and was his life-long friend and cham- 
pion. They started painting together, and it is not possi- 
ble now to determine who deserved the greater credit for 
the new movement. Suffice it to say that between them 
the naturalistic landscape of modern French art was 
founded. 

Doubtless these life-long friends, by the interchange of 
ideas and the comparison of methods, influenced each other 
somewhat. At any rate there seems not a great deal of 
difference in their points of view, apart from the personal 
equation which neither of them could or would relinquish. 
Dupré himself said that they used to go into the forest 
and saturate themselves with truth, and when they returned 
to the studio they squeezed the sponge. Yes; but it was 
a slightly different sponge that each squeezed. The indi- 
vidualities of the men were not the same. Dupré had 
a melancholy strain about him, and all his life was a 
somewhat lonely man. He was at his happiest when by 
himself with the storms of nature. He preferred nature in 


her sombre moods, and was forever picturing gathering 
clouds, sunbursts, dark shadows, swaying trees, wind- 
whipped waters, and the silence after storm. This love of 
the dark side of nature appears as a personal confession 
in almost all of his work. It was his individual bias which 
distinguished him from Rousseau, who was fond of the sun 
and its brilliant colors. Yet beneath the rough aspects of 
nature Dupré saw with Rousseau the majestic strength, 
mass, and harmony of the forest; saw the bulk and volume 
of the oaks, the great ledges of moss-covered rock, the 
sweeping lines of-hills, the storm light, the voyaging clouds, 
the vast aérial envelope. His mental grasp of the scheme 
entire was not inferior to Rousseau’s, but perhaps he had 
not the latter’s patient energy and infinite capacity for 
labor. He threw off work with greater ease and was satis- 
fied with a slighter result. But this only by comparison. 
Asa matter of fact, he was a very strong painter of land- 
scape and a superb painter of the sea. The open sea with 
one or two wind-blown fishing smacks and a stormy sky 
was his delight. And in this great expanse of water he 
saw what Rousseau saw in the earth and sky—the eternal 
permanence of nature’s work. His ocean isa heaving im- 
mensity that has always existed, an unconquerable field 
that retains no impress from humanity, a vast untamed 
element that rolls and tosses and seethes as remorseless 
and as beautiful to-day as when God said, “ Let there be 
light.” And the sublime strength of it in storm! This 
was the quality that Dupré felt above everything else, and 
this it was that he continually strove to portray. He failed 
often, especially in his latter-day work; but when he suc- 
ceeded, how powerful was the success ! 

Dupré’s landscapes—the oaks of Fontainebleau under a 
deep blue sky with cumulus clouds, the outstretched plain 
of Barbizon, the grove with a white house and a pool of 
water—are quite as familiar as his marines, They are never 


lacking in a virile sense of body and bulk, and they are al- 
ways pleasing in their air, light, and color; howbeit the 
melancholy and the sombre view is there. He came at a 
time when the high register of impressionism was unknown, 
but his deep reds, russet-browns, dark greens, and cobalt 
blues are still profound color harmonies. Art changes like 
all things human; but the good art always remains good, the 
bad art always remains bad. And the spirit, the poetry, 
the charm that a painter puts in his work, if it be honest, 
will never pall upon succeeding generations. The pathos 
of Botticelli, the naive sincerity of Carpaccio, are just as 
pertinent to this century as the charm of Corot or Daubigny 
and the Michael-Angelesque strength of Rousseau. Just 
so with Dupré’s poetry of nature’s dark moods. Cloud 
and shadow, wind and storm were the very wings of his 
muse. Heloved them deeply and painted them with a 
lover’s passion. Throughout his long life he did not swerve 
from his early allegiance. He saw others rise about him 
with different views, different interpretations of nature, 
different methods, but with calm dignity he held his indi- 
vidual way. Good or bad, what work he sent forth he 
would have his own and bear a personal seal. Such work 
is never likely to pall upon the taste. 

Fortune favored Dupré with a more even disposition 
than his companion Rousseau. He got along with the 
world better, was more successful financially, and had less 
bitterness in his life. He outlived all the early tempests 
that gathered about the heads of the band and saw the ideas 
they had struggled for at last acknowledged. His quiet 
bearing under success was as admirable as his fortitude 
under early failure. He was not easily turned aside or 
beaten down or over-exalted. The belief of his youth he 
carried with him into old age, firmly convinced that some 
day it would triumph. It has triumphed, and Dupré with 
Rousseau has been justified. 


CHARLES-FRANCOIS DAUBIGNY. 
(1817—1878.) 


CHARLES-FRANCOIS DAUBIGNY, the youngest of the men 
now known as the Barbizon painters, was born in Paris in 
1817. His father was a teacher of drawing, and his uncle 
and aunt were miniature painters of enough importance to 
have their work exhibited at the Salon. With strong in- 
herited artistic tastes, pencils and paint naturally became 
the playthings of his youth, and long before he had reached 
his majority they were the means of his daily livelihood. 
He began his artistic work by ornamenting articles of 
household use. He afterwards learned the art of engraving 
and etching, and became an illustrator of books. In paint- 
ing he was a pupil of Paul Delaroche. 

Defeated as a candidate for the Prix de Rome, not by 
competition, but because, ignorant of the rules, he was ab- 
sent on the day when the preparations began, he resolutely 
determined to save every sou he could spare from his daily 
needs, in order that he might, as soon as possible, pay his 
own expenses to Rome. The story, as told by M. Henriet, 
is in substance as follows: Daubigny at this period of his 
youth shared his lodgings and his money with his friend 
Mignan, another art student. Both boys determined that 
they would go to Italy, and hoarded their small savings for 
that purpose day by day, not in a common cash-box, which 
they could open in a moment of weakness with a knife, but 
in a built-up hole in the wall of their room, which nobody 


could plunder without the aid of a crowbar; they lived 
sparingly, kept no account of their deposits, but remained 
in a delightful uncertainty of the rate of their accumula- 
tion, till at the end of a year, in fear and trembling, they 
broke open the wall and let out a tinkling rivulet of small 
coins, which amounted to fourteen hundred francs; with 
this wealth and with gaiters and knapsacks they bravely 
set out together and walked to Rome. They spent four 
months in Italy, and then walked home—Mignan to marry, 
and Daubigny to resume his old employment. 

In 1836 or ’7, when about twenty years of age, Daubigny 
went to Holland. He, too, had heard about Paul Potter’s 
“Young Bull” and Rembrandt’s “ Night Watch,” and 
wanted to see them with his own eyes. 

Daubigny, more than any other man of the Barbizon 
School, was a painter of delightful, lovable pictures. He 
had a singular appreciation, not only of what was lovely 
in itself, but what was pictorially beautiful as well. Ugli- 
ness had no place in his domain of art, least of all as a 
theme for technical display. 

His early impressions of the country clung to him through 
life. His biographer, M. Henriet, says: “It is among the 
apple-orchards, in the pure air of the open country, that he 
passed his earlier years and imbibed that love of the fields 
which became the passion of his life.” And so in 1857, 
when he exhibited at the Salon of that year the picture 
which won for him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, it 
is interesting to note that the subject he had chosen was 
“Springtime,” and represents a-peasant girl riding through 
a field of tender, upright grain, while on either side of her 
—the prominent features of the landscape—are groups of 
young apple trees, whose branches are laden with blos- 
soms. The picture was bought by the government, and is 
now inthe Louvre. It is a charming work, executed with 
great delicacy and painstaking care, but wanting somewhat 


in that vigor of handling and richness of color which he 
attained in his later and riper works. 

But although Daubigny loved the orchards, the vine- 
yards, and the fields, it was the beauties of the Oise and the 
Marne and the Seine which finally furnished him the sub- 
jects of so many lovely pictures during the later and best 
period of his life. His preparations for sketching were 
original and complete. He built a large boat which he 
called “le Bottin,” and it became at once his floating studio 
and his summer home. And what a charming studio it 
was! Albert Wolff says: “The boat used by Daubigny 
was arranged for long voyages; the cooking was done on 
board; there was a good wine-cellar; you drank deep and 
worked hard. The sketches accumulated, and when win- 
ter was come, Daubigny returned to Paris provisioned 
with the booty of art and nature, the landscapes which, 
toward the close of his life, collectors and dealers battled 
fore 

With this boat for his river home, how absolutely the 
usual annoyances which attend a painter’s work passed 
away. No longer now the tramp of miles to greet the fra- 
grant, misty morn; no more the blazing heat of noon to 
interrupt his work; no splashing of a sudden shower to 
hurry him to shelter; but delightfully protected in his boat, 
with every appliance and needed comfort at his hand, he 
could paint at will at morning, noon, or evening hour, 
until the gathering twilight closed the labors of the day. 
And so, with his son Karl, and sometimes his daughter, 
for companions, he went up and down the rivers of France, 
mooring his house-boat to the bank or anchoring it in 
midstream, wherever a lovely spot invited him to linger. 
He knew every bend in the river, every bush upon its 
banks, every slender tree lifting its foliage towards the 
summer sky, every deep pool with their reflections mirrored 
in its depths; and these he painted with such poetic fervor 


and such loving care that, beholding his picture, we forget 
the master, forget our own selves, and see only that which 
entranced the artist—Nature, idyllic, serene, and robed in 
beauty. 

That Daubigny had his limitations is simply to say that 
he was mortal; but among modern landscape painters, I 
doubt if there can be found a man whose pictures have 
delighted a more numerous, more varied, more enthusiastic 
and more cultivated body of admirers than this painter of 
the rivers of France. Careful in his choice of subject in 
the first place, he knew no limitations as to the hour of the 
day in which to paint it. To him it was quite enough that 
the scene was beautiful. Indeed this dominant quality of 
beauty, united to truth of local color, and stamped with his 
own personality, is one of the most recognizable character- 
istics of his works. Who has suggested with greater charm 
the soft springiness of the green sod to the tread of our 
feet? Who with greater realism the freshness of the air 
and the scent of the earth after a shower? Who with 
greater loveliness the banks of the Seine, with its slender 
trees and overhanging bushes reflected in the placid waters 
beneath? Who with greater solemnity the hush of the 
night, when the pale moon mounts the sky, and sheds over 
hill and stream its veiled, mysterious light? Ah, all this 
may not be great painting, but it goes straight to the heart. 
Of him Edmund About says: 

“The art of this illustrious master consists in choosing 
well a bit of country and painting it as it is, enclosing in its 
frame all the simple and naive. poetry which it contains, 
No effects of studied light, no artificial and complicated 
composition, nothing which allures the eyes, surprises the 
mind, and crushes'the littleness of man. No, it is the real, 
hospitable and familiar country, without display or dis- 
guise, in which one finds himself so well off, and in which 
one is wrong not to live longer when he is there, to which 


Daubigny transports me without jolting each time that I 
stop before one of his pictures.” 

And thus the French author puts in words what we have 
all felt to be absolutely true about Daubigny’s works. In 
them we find the most lovely scenes in nature presented 
with the frankness and directness of a child, but with the 
grasp and touch of amaster. Yes, M. About is right. We 
do love to linger over Daubigny’s pictures. In addition to 
many other qualities, they possess this potent charm: they 
are restful, peaceful, refreshing; and after the fretful an- 
noyances of the day, which come to us all, their influence 
is at once a song and a benediction. 

It is quite probable that other men of the Barbizon 
School at times were greater artists than he; they may 
have possessed a livelier poetic fancy ; they may have dis- 
played a nobler creative genius, and wrought with a more 
intense dramatic power; they may have been better crafts- 
men and attained greater heights in the mere technique of 
art; but none of them possessed Daubigny’s absorbing 
love of what was beautiful in nature for its own sake, nor 
the exquisite sensibility and frankness with which he 
painted those familiar scenes which have so long delighted 
the lovers of the beautiful in nature, and filled their hearts 
with a sincere affection for the painter of ‘“ The Orchard,” 
“The River,” and “ The Borders of the Sea.” 


NARCISO VIRGILIO DIAZ. 
($808—1 876.) 


D1AzZ—of Spanish descent—was third member of the 
Fontainebleau group. A Frenchman only by the accident 
of birth, he became one of the Fontainebleau men by the 
accident of acquaintance. At Sévres, where as a boy he 
was decorating pottery, he knew Jules Dupré, and it was 
probably through Dupré that he met Rousseau and 
virtually became his pupil. But before Diaz knew Fon- 
tainebleau or painted its landscape he had served his 
time in Bohemian Paris, painting small figure pictures 
under the influence of Correggio, Prud’hon, and Delacroix. 
These fanciful little pictures of nudes, and of groups in 
rich costume, the subjects for which he got out of books 
and his own perfervid imagination, he executed with little 
labor and got for them little money. It is said that he 
sold them for five francs apiece, but the number of them 
was so large that even at that price he managed to live 
comfortably. 

But these were the years of his groping in the dark. He 
was masterless, homeless, quite adrift. When he joined the 
Fontainebleau band and came under the sway of Rousseau’s 
serious personality, Diaz himself grew serious and took up 
landscape painting with an earnest spirit. He never forgot 
his early days of decoration; his Arabian Nights’ fancies 
never entirely left him. Even when he was painting his 
noblest landscapes, he was often giving them a romantic 


interest by introducing small figures of bathers at a pool, 
figures of riders, huntsmen, woodsmen, gypsies. The land- 
scape he did directly from nature, in the forest or on its 
outskirts, but the figures were figments of his brain, prob- 
ably put in as an afterthought for mystery and color 
effect. The landscape hardly needed the added figures for 
mystery, for Diaz had a way of putting weirdness and ro- . 
mance in the light and air, in the quiet pools, in the trees 
themselves. With all their fascinating charm there was 
something solemn and impressive in his wood interiors. 
Still, it cannot be said that his work suffered by the intro- 
duction of figures. They lent brightness, liveliness, accent 
to the scene, and above all they were the high-pitched color 
notes of the composition. Diaz had a color sense of his 
own which none of the masters who influenced him in art 
could eradicate. There was a sobriety about Rousseau 
even in his highest chromatic flights; his color scheme was 
true, studied, exact in every respect. Diaz, on the con- 
trary, was volatile, enthusiastic, capricious, and his work at 
times gives one the impression of abandon and improviza- 
tion. He knew the truth of nature, but he was no slave to 
it. Like Turner, he was for making a picture first of all, and 
if certain notes or tones were not in the scene he put them 
in. And who shall gainsay the wisdom of his course in 
doing so? A picture is not necessarily valuable for the 
amount of truth it conveys. Its first affair is to be a picture. 

But the popular impression that Diaz was the unrestrained 
happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care painter of the group is some- 
what wide of the mark. That a painter hasa fanciful spirit 
and easy execution does not necessarily argue a careless 
hand or a superficial eye. -Watteau was just as serious in 
his mood as Michael Angelo ; and Diaz, though he had not 
Dupré’s melancholy or Rousseau’s great thoughtfulness, was 
very far from knocking off his Fontainebleau landscapes 
with a dash and a laugh. He studied long and hard over his 


canvases, and the gayer-hued and more volatile they ap- 
peared the harder he had to study over them. Of course 
he was uneven in his work (every painter is so more or less), 
but one seldom finds him uninteresting. His drawing was 
not fautless compared with Rousseau’s; but this comparison 
—and it is always made—is hard upon poor Diaz. Rous- 
seau’s drawing of landscape has never been equalled, and if 
there were no Rousseau we should find no fault with Diaz. 
Besides, drawing means different things to different men. 
Diaz would not tolerate outline where he could use the color 
patch, and in that respect he was a true follower of Dela- 
croix. It is his color patch that people talk about as his 
‘uncertain drawing,” and they talk about it quite uncon- 
scious of the fact that Diaz meant it to be a patch, a tone, 
a value, and not a rim or a line. They often talk, too, 
of his “distorted lights,” just as though he did not de- 
sign them so with full knowledge of the result they would 
produce. 

If we choose to run on in this vein, the light, the color, 
the trees, the skies, everything by Diaz—or, for that matter, 
by anyone else—could be written down as false to nature. 
But that is not recognizing painting as the convention that 
itis. The first and final question is always: ‘‘ Has the 
painter made a picture?” And to that, in the case cf Diaz, 
there can be but one answer. He made many of them, and 
most excellent ones into the bargain. His figure pieces 
are his slighter works, and are not the ones that gave him 
his fame. He lives by his Fontainebleau landscapes. He 
is the third man in the great triad, and, though different 
in sentiment, mood, and individuality from Rousseau or 
Dupré, he is not unworthy to be named with them as one 
of the great landscape painters of the century. 

Diaz was more successful in a worldly way than either of 
his companions. His pictures sold readily and he received 
many honors. But he never forgot his less fortunate com- 


rades. He bought their pictures, loaned them money, kept 
their heads above water, while ever proclaiming their 
merit. This was particularly true of Rousseau and Millet. 
He never let slip an opportunity for testifying to their 
excellences. In 1851 he was made Chevalier of the Legion 
of Honor, but Rousseau was overlooked. At a dinner 
given to the new officers, Diaz made a great commotion by 
rising on his wooden leg and loudly proclaiming the health 
of “ Théodore Rousseau, our master, who has been forgot- 
ten.” The incident not only shows his loyalty to his 
friend, but his life-long belief as an artist in the greatness 
of Rousseau. 


GEORGES MICHEL. 
(1763—1848.) 


AMONG French painters Georges Michel was the first to 
discard the conventions of academic schools and to repre- 
sent nature as it unfolded itself to his observant eyes. It 
was not nature crowded with details and perplexing in its 
changeful transitory moods, but nature seen in a large, im- 
pressive way. Sometimes it was an extended plain lost in 
the far-off horizon, while overhead the sky was filled with 
floating clouds, dark with pent-up thunder, or cleft with 
sunshine ; sometimes it was great rugged trees so imbedded 
in the soil that no fury of the storm could uproot them; 
but his favorite subject was the overhanging sky and the 
plain of Montmartre. 

At one time in his life he was so poor that he could 
hardly procure the humblest materials of his craft, and not 
infrequently his pictures were painted on paper instead of 
canvas. Hiscolor scheme wasa very simple one, consisting 
mainly of dull greys and sombre browns, and yet his pict- 
ures are rich and warm in tone, full of movement, intense 
in feeling, and restrained in power. He was doubtless in- 
fluenced by the old Dutch landscape painters, and particu- 
larly by Van Goyen, although he did not have the technical 
knowledge, the lightness of touch, and the range and sweep 
of the Holland master. He was born thirty-four years 
before Corot, forty-nine before Rousseau; and while he 
does not rank as a painter with these illustrious men, he 


nevertheless deserves recognition as the forerunner of that | 
great school of landscape art which for so many years has 
been the glory of France. 

William Ernest Henley, in his historical and biographical 
notes of the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888, 
says of Michel: 

“His place in French art is peculiar. At a time when 
the classic convention was most oppressive and triumphant, 
he was working from nature in the plain of Montmartre, 
intent upon realizing a conception of painting adapted 
from and largely inspired by the practice of Ruysdael and 
Hobbema. He was, indeed, a romantique before romanti- 
cism; yet when romanticism came, and was seen, and con- 
quered, it passed the old man by as though he had not 
been. . . . To compare him with Crome—with whose 
art his own has certain analogies—is to liken small with 
great. His handling is seldom strong, his modelling is often 
primitive and naive, so that his accomplishment is not of 
the type that makes men memorable. But his colour— 
whose scheme is one of low blues and browns—is often per- 
sonal and is almost always decorative, and his simple fan- 
tasias on the themes of Nature are touched with an imagi- 
native quality that, conjoined with the sound convention of 
which he was a master, enables them to hold their own 
upon a wall against the good work of far greater men.” 


RICHARD WILSON, R.A. 
(1744—1782.) 


THE most picturesque, as well as the most pitiable, figure 
among the early landscape painters of Great Britain is 
Richard Wilson. In point of time he was the earliest of 
them all, and in his life the most neglected of them all; 
although in less than a hundred years after his death his 
works have become classic and his fame immortal. 

Little is known of Wilson’s personal history. He was 
too unimportant a person in his day to attract the ad- 
miration of the multitude, and his death made no ripple 
on the surface of the waters which rolled over his memory. 
He was born in Walesin 1714. In early youth he developed 
a talent for drawing which was encouraged by his relation, 
Sir George Wynn, who sent him to London to study the 
art of painting. He was placed in the studio of a portrait 
painter named Wright, where he remained six years as his 
pupil, having, doubtless, long before that time had expired 
learned all that his master had to teach. He began his 
career as a portrait painter, but his portraits, like those of 
his master, are for the most part forgotten. When Wilson 
was thirty-six years old, he set out for Italy, where he 
remained for six years studying the works of the old masters 
and storing his mind with the associations and traditions 
of that historic land. Under the advice of Zucarelli he 
abandoned portrait painting and took up landscape painting 
instead. Joseph Vernet, the French painter at Rome, was 


so impressed with Wilson’s talent that he invited him to 
exchange landscapes, and used to say to his English visitors 
and patrons who came to his studio: “ Don’t talk of my 
landscapes alone, when your countryman, Wilson, paints so 
beautifully.” 

Wilson returned to England with high hopes of success 
in his native land. He was doomed to disappointment. 
Although his merit was so conspicuous among the artists 
of the day that he was made one of the thirty-six founders 
of the Royal Academy, and although he bore the in- 
fluential title of R.A., still the great public saw nothing in 
his landscapes to excite their admiration, much less a desire 
to purchase them, although they were so beautiful that they 
won for him the title of the “‘ English Claude.” While in 
Italy he had caught the spirit of the old Italian masters, 
and he sought to reproduce it in his English home. His 
pictures were full of reminiscences of Italy. As Allan 
Cunningham has said: “ His landscapes are fanned with the 
pure air, warmed with the glowing suns, filled with the 
ruined temples and sparkling with the wooded streams 
and tranquil lakes of that classic region.” The landscapes 
that the Englishmen of his day possessed bore foreign 
names, and they never dreamed of finding anything to 
compare with them from one of their own countrymen and 
at their own doors. It was quite enough for them to 
believe that no Englishman could paint good landscapes, 
and they accordingly passed his pictures by as unworthy 
of their patronage. As years rolled by, without encour- 
agement and almost without friends, the disheartened 
painter at last went to the pawnbrokers to dispose of his 
pictures. As they too, in their turn, found his works un- 
salable, they at length rebelled. Said one of them to him, 
when he had brought another picture to pawn: “Why, 
look ye, Dick! You know I want to oblige, but see! there 
are all the pictures I have paid ye for these last three years,” 


Allan Cunningham gives this most pitiable account of 
the old painter’s condition a short time before he died: 
“As fortune forsook him he made sketches for half a 
crown and expressed gratitude to Paul Sandby for pur- 
chasing a number from him at a small advance in price. 

His last retreat in this wealthy city was a small 
room somewhere about Tottenham-Court Road; an easel 
and a brush, a chair and a table, a hard bed with but few 
clothes, a scanty meal and the favorite pot of porter were 
all Wilson could call his own. A disgrace to an age which 
lavished its tens of thousands on mountebanks and pro- 
jectors, on Italian screamers, and men who made mouths at 
Shakespeare.” Ernest Chesneau says: “In France Wilson 
would have been covered with honor and glory.” 

Wilson’s pictures are scattered throughout England, a 
few in public galleries, but by far the most in private col- 
lections. Those in the National Gallery and South Ken- 
sington Museum do not fairly represent him at his best. 
The works that gave expression to the full scope of his 
genius are to be found for the most part in the ancestral 
homes of England, where they are the honored companions 
of the best examples of the Dutch and French masters. 
His Italian subjects are regarded as his best. He looked 
at nature as a visible poem spread out before him, and in 
the spirit of a poet he translated her on his canvas. He 
was keenly sensitive to beauty of form, to elegance of com- 
position, to the charm of sunny color with which he bathed 
his sunset skies. With a mind singularly open to the influ- 
ence of classic story and song, he delighted in painting 
those scenes of sylvan beauty whose ruined temples are 
the fragmentary memorials of great events in the history 
of the race. His works have long since become classic in 
English art and have influenced many a painter since his 
day, among whom Turner himself may be named when he 
painted the two great pictures in the National Gallery now 


hung, as a perpetual challenge, between two masterpieces 
of Claude Lorrain. 

Allan Cunningham says of him: “‘ As the remembrance 
of the artist himself faded on men’s memories, the character 
of his works began to rise in public estimation. Then, and 
not till then, lovers of art perceived that the productions of 
an Englishman, who lived in want and died broken-hearted, 
_ equalled in poetic conception and splendor of colouring 
many of the works of those more fortunate painters, who 
had kings for their protectors and princes and nobles for 
their companions.” * 

Wilson died in 1782, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. 


*Cunningham’s “ British Painters,” vol, i., p. 152. 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
($727—1788.) 


FOUR years later than Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas 
Gainsborough was born in 1727 at Sudbury, Suffolk County, 
England. When a lad of fourteen or fifteen, he went to 
London to study the art of painting. -He remained three 
years a member of St. Martin’s Lane Academy, and at 
eighteen years of age returned to his native town an ac- 
complished painter. When Sir Joshua was eighteen years 
of age, he had just started for London to commence his 
studies of art, while Gainsborough at that age had finished 
his art training there and had begun his professional work. 
To many persons outside of England, Gainsborough is 
known only as the great portrait painter who divided with 
Sir Joshua Reynolds the applause of his countrymen. But 
it ought never to be forgotten that, great as he was in por- 
traiture, he was equally great in landscape painting. In- 
deed the latter branch of art was the one which furnished 
him the greatest delight. All the time he could spare from 
painting portraits for his patrons he spent in painting 
landscapes for himself. In his earlier works, he was doubt- 
less influenced somewhat by the Dutch masters, Wynants, 
Hobbema, and Ruysdael. Later on, however, he developed 
an originality of style, a largeness of feeling, and a fidelity 
to nature which have made his finest landscapes a part of 
the art treasures of the English race. The scenes about 
his native village were the frequent subjects of his noblest 
pictures, and these he painted with the ardor of a lover 


and the hand of a master. It is quite true, that scarcely 
anybody bought them and that few even took the trouble 
to notice them; for at this period a just appreciation of 
native landscape art in England was something almost un- 
known. “ They stood in long lines from his hall to his paint- 
ing room,” says Sir William Beechey, ‘‘and those who came 
to sit for their portraits rarely deigned to honor them witha 
look as they passed along.” Portrait painting was the only 
kind of English art which brought homea guinea. Richard 
Wilson, when past middle life, tried the experiment of paint- 
ing landscapes to the exclusion of portraiture, with which 
he had begun his career, but, great master that he was, he 
paid a heavy penalty for his choice, for his beautiful pict- 
ures were neglected and unsold, and the painter's days were 
spent in poverty and often in absolute want. 

Of Wilson’s landscapes one has beautifully said: ‘‘ His 
streams seemed all abodes for nymphs, and his temples 
worthy of gods;”’ while of Gainsborough’s, “ The wildest 
nooks of his woods have their living tenants, and in all his 
glades and valleys, we see the sons and daughters of men.” 

Gainsborough’s pictures, even in his early manner, when 
he seemed to have some of the Dutch painters in his 
mind,—particularly Wynants in composition, and Ruysdael 
in color,—have about them the stamp and the flavor of old 
England. And if he were to be influenced by any one, 
what better master in landscape painting could he possibly 
have than Ruysdael, whom Fromantin calls ‘the most dis- 
tinguished figure in the school after Rembrandt ;”’ and again, 
“next to Claude Lorraine, the greatest landscape painter 
in the world”? And yet if you compare the two, Gains- 
borough had a greater and more varied gamut of color 
than the Dutchman; he had equal richness and depth of 
tone, and with it all he gave to his subject a faithful and 
loving devotion unsurpassed even in the best achievements 
of the older master. 


Later on Gainsborough’s style changed. All suggestion 
of Dutch influence passed away. His manner of painting 
partook somewhat of the free, broad, sketchy handling and 
the mellow golden tone of Watteau; and yet it is doubtful 
if Gainsborough was at all familiar with the really fine pict- 
ures of the great French painter. But in whatever aspect 
Gainsborough’s work is observed, whether in landscape or 
in portraiture, whether in his earlier or his later pictures, 
he is thoroughly national in his feeling and point of view, 
so that Sir Joshua rightly declared: 

“If ever this nation shall produce a genius sufficient to ac- 
quire the honourable distinction of an English School, the 
name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in 
this history of art, among the very first of that rising name.” 

Forty-eight years after Gainsborough’s death, John Con- 
stable, in an address delivered at the “ Royal Institute of 
Great Britain,” paid this eloquent tribute to the landscape 
painting of his great Suffolk predecessor: 

‘“‘The landscape of Gainsborough is soothing, tender, and 
affecting. The stillness of noon, the depths of twilight, 
and the dews and pearls of the morning, are all to be found 
on the canvases of this most benevolent and kind-hearted 
man. On looking at them, we find tears in our eyes, and 
know not what brings them. . . . Gainsborough has 
been compared to Murillo by those who cannot distinguish 
between the sudject and the av¢t. Like Murillo he painted 
the peasantry of his country, but here the resemblance 
ceases. His taste was in all respects greatly superior to 
that of the Spanish painter.”—Leslie’s “ Life of Constable,” 
p. 147. 

Ernest Chesneau, the distinguished French art writer, in 
his “‘ English School of Painting,” says (page 115): 

“And now I repeat what I have already said: Gains- 
borough is the father of English landscape. He proceeded 
on the contrary plan to that of Wilson. . . . Hedid 


not wait until a spirit from on high should influence him 
under other skies; he never left his island, and the Suffolk 
woods always seemed to him the most beautiful in the 
world.” Again, at page 141, he contrasts Gainsborough 
and Constable in these words: 

“The youth of both Gainsborough and Constable was 
spent in Suffolk, and thus this County has the honor of 
being the birthplace of England’s two greatest landscape 
painters. 

‘“‘ Sweetness, grace, and a tinge of melancholy shed their 
softening charm over Gainsborough’s landscape. Through 
the clouds one imagines a soft sky; no hard or sharp angles 
are visible; the too vivid colors tone themselves down, 
subject to his unconsciously sympathetic handling; every 
smallest detail breathes of the serenity which issued from 
Gainsborough’s own peaceful temperament. The painting 
of the other artist, with its brilliant and sometimes even 
hard tones; its gusty rain-clouds driven before the north 
wind; its deep, frozen water, reveals to you the boldness of 
a strong nature, the agitations of a passionate soul. Whilst 
Gainsborough regards Nature in the light of his own pure 
and tender feeling, Constable, in a masterful and imperious 
manner, lifts the veil of beauty and depicts her in her 
grand and angry moods.” * 

The tenderness and the passionate impulse of Gains- 
borough’s nature, so often seen in his landscapes, find 
expression also in his portraits. His love of color was 
greater than his love of form. In his portraits we occa- 
sionally discover defects in drawing, but they are not due 
so much to his inability to draw correctly, as to a slight 
carelessness in minor details, and his absorption in impor- 
tant things, as the grace, the elegance, the personal charac- 
ter, the air of distinction which he gave to his subject. 


* «The English School of Painting,” by Ernest Chesneau. Trans- 
lated by Lucy N. Etherington. 2d ed. (London, 1885), pp. 141, 142. 


Besides all this he makes you feel that his portraits are 
distinct personalities; that they are alive—so much so, that 
they often seem as though about to speak. Gainsborough, 
moreover, has this distinction, that among all the painters 
of his country and time, and indeed almost among the 
painters of any country and time, he stands alone as one 
equally great in landscape or in portraiture. In his own 
day as a landscape painter he was without a peer; while in 
portraiture he divided supremacy in Sir Joshua’s chosen 
field of art. 

A present Associate of the Royal Academy, Mr. W. B. 
Richmond, concludes a critical essay on the works of 
Thomas Gainsborough as follows: 

“The extreme freshness of colour in Gainsborough’s por- 
traits contrasts rather forcibly with the brown harmonies of 
his landscapes, so that he is nearer nature in the fresh face 
of a woman than in the colour of a pollard or oak. His 
portraits are not conventional; his landscapes often are. 
Therefore, his portraits are artistically the more valuable; 
and though admiration cannot hold aloof from, nor artis- 
tic enthusiasm stand unmoved before, his art as a painter of 
landscape, Gainsborough will live chiefly and rightly by 
those poetic, subtle, generous likenesses of the beauty, 
grace, and noble bearing of the men and women of his 
time. 

“ Without the variety or learning of Reynolds, wanting in 
the vigorous truth of Hogarth, less masterly in academic 
power than Romney, Gainsborough fascinates more than 
any of these great men, by the unconscious sympathy with 
which he feels, by the unartificial manner of his work, by 
his very simple love of truth, by the exquisite sensibility of 
his treatment, and above all, by as high a feeling for beauty 
as has been possessed by any English painter.” * 


* «English Art in the Public Galleries of London” (London, 1888), 
p. 36. 


Mr. Walter Armstrong says: 

“The Ayrshire ploughman lives by the purity of his 
genius, by the quality, in fact, of his gift. Gainsborough 
will do the same. His pictures will not attract the scribe. 
Nobody will laboriously recount every stage in the process 
of their genesis. . . . They are simply gems born of 
the fire struck out at the contact of a rare artistic spirit with 
the beauty of the world.’’—“ Gainsborough,” p. 86. 

Of this great artist, John Ruskin, with characteristic 
enthusiasm says: 

“A great name his, whether of the English or any other 
school. . . . The greatest colourist since Rubens. 
Gainsborough’s power of colour is capable of taking rank 
beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colourist, Sir 
Joshua himself not excepted, of the whole English School. 

In the purely technical part of painting, Turner isa 

child to Gainsborough. . . . His hand isas light as the 
sweep of acloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam. 
His forms are grand, simple, ideal. . . . He never loses 
sight of his picture asa whole. . . . Ina word, Gains- 
borough is an immortal painter.”—‘“ Handbook to the 
National Gallery,” pp. 398, 399. 


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. 
(£723-—3792.) 


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS was born at Plympton, Devon- 
shire, England, July 16, 1723. When eighteen years of 
age, he went to London and became the pupil of Hudson, 
who has been characterized as the most distinguished 
“portrait maker” of that time. His connection with his 
teacher was destined to an abrupt termination before it 
had lasted quite two years. It is said that Reynolds painted 
the portrait of an old servant woman in the house with such 
astonishing success that the master became jealous of the 
applause his pupil received and dismissed him from his 
studio. 

When twenty-six years of age, Reynolds went to Italy 
to complete his study of art. He remained there three 
years, studying the works of Titian and Paul Veronese and 
the other great masters of the Italian School. 

He returned to England in 1752 and began at once the 
practice of his profession. The painters whom he had left 
behind him with one accord condemned his style, and his 
old teacher, Hudson, was loudest in his denunciation. 
Reynolds, however, pursued the even tenor of his way 
and speedily acquired fame and fortune. In the year 1758 
he is said to have painted more portraits than in any other 
year throughout his life. ‘‘ He received six sitters daily 
who appeared in their turns; and he kept regular lists of 
those who sat and of those who were waiting until a finished 


portrait should open a vacancy for their admission. He 
painted them as they stood upon his lists and often sent 
the work home before the colors were dry. . . . His 
study was octagonal, some twenty feet long, sixteen broad, 
and about fifteen feet high. The window was small and 
square, and the sill nine feet from the floor. His sitter’s 
chair moved on castors and stood above the floor a foot 
and a half. He held his palettes by a handle and his 
brushes were eighteen inches long. He wrought stand- 
ing and with great celerity. He rose early, breakfasted 
at nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or 
touched unfinished portraits till eleven brought a sitter; 
painted till four; then dressed and gave the evening to 
company.” * 

When the Royal Academy was founded, Reynolds was 
made its first president and was knighted by the king. He 
held the office for twenty-one years, and retired amid ex- 
pressions of universal and profound regret. Asa rule, his 
pictures were unsigned. A notable exception is found in 
his famous painting of ‘‘ Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse,” 
now in possession of the Duke of Westminster. When the 
work was finished, the great painter said to the equally 
great actress, with courtly grace, ‘“‘ Madam, allow me to go 
down to posterity on the hem of your garment,” and on 
the edge of her dress he traced these words, “ Reynolds, 
pinxit.”’ 

In an age of flattery and fashion, Sir Joshua chose for 
his intimate associates such men as Dr. Johnson and Gold- 
smith and Sterne and Garrick and Edmund Burke. Dr. 
Johnson was his welcome and constant guest; Burke was 
his admirer and stanch friend ; Goldsmith dedicated to him 
his ‘Deserted Village;” the University of Oxford con- 
ferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil 
Law, and his old neighbors signalized their appreciation of 


* Cunningham's “ British Painters,” vol. i., p. 201. 


his growing fame by making him Mayor of his native 
town. 

While Reynolds occasionally painted allegorical figures, 
as, for example, the series for the windows of New College 
Chapel at Oxford, still it is as a painter of portraits that 
he reached his greatest heights. Writing of his portraits, 
Dr. Johnson said: ‘‘ I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer 
to heroes and goddesses, to empty splendor and to airy fic- 
tion, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, 
in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the 
absent and continuing the presence of the dead.” 

Reynolds delighted in painting children as well as beauti- 
ful women and distinguished men. To all he imparted 
something of his own kindly nature, always striving to 
conceal defects, always aiming to heighten the beauty or 
ennoble the character of his subject. To posterity his 
portraits have become beautiful pictures as well as like- 
nesses of those who were fortunate enough to secure his 
services. Says Allan Cunningham: “In character and ex- 
pression and in manly ease he has never been surpassed. 
He is always equal—always natural—graceful, unaffected. 
His boldness of posture and his singular freedom of colour- 
ing are so supported by all the grace of art, by all the 
sorcery of skill, that they appear natural and noble. Over 
the meanest head he sheds the halo of dignity; his men 
are all nobleness; his women all loveliness, and his children 
all simplicity ; yet they are all like the living originals.” 

The accomplished English art writer, W. E. Henley, 
concludes a brief essay on Reynolds in these words: ‘‘ The 
pedants pass—they and their catalogues with them; the 
literary critic of art dies of his own literature ; the fashions, 
the airs and graces of inspiration change, flourish, and are 
forgotten almost with the hour. But for Sir Joshua there 
is no vanishing, nor death, nor change. He had the 
supreme good sense to recognize that Raphael, Titian, Van 


Dyck were his masters, and that, as their pupil, he was 
greater than everybody save themselves.” * 

Sir Joshua died February 23, 1792, in the sixty-ninth 
year of his age, and his body was laid to rest in the crypt 
of St. Paul’s. 


* W. E. Henley’s ‘‘ Notes on the Glasgow International Exhibition,” 
1888. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
(1776—1 837.) 


JOHN CONSTABLE, the son of a well-to-do miller, was 
born at East Bergholt, Suffolk County, England, June 11, 
1776. His father wished him to be educated for the 
Church, but the son preferred the career of an artist. To 
settle the difference between them, his father placed him 
temporarily in charge of one of his mills. The young 
man’s occupation there, commonplace as it seemed to be, 
afforded him opportunities for studying day by day the 
movements and character of the clouds; and the knowl- 
edge he then acquired became of the greatest value in 
after life when painting the skies of his pictures. When 
twenty-three years of age, he went to London and became 
a pupil of the Royal Academy. At that time, an Ameri- 
can, Benjamin West, was the President of that Institution. 
On one occasion, early in his career, a landscape of Consta- 
ble’s was rejected by the hanging committee. Full of 
gloom, the disheartened young painter took it to the Presi- 
dent for advice. West examined it carefully and then 
chased away his despondency with these cheering words: 
“Don’t be disheartened, young man. We shall hear of 
you again. You must have loved nature very much before 
you could have painted this.” Afterwards Constable 
was more successful; and from 1803, with the single ex- 
ception of the year 1804, he was represented at every 
exhibition held at the Royal Academy during his life; 


having contributed in all over one hundred examples of his 
work. 

But, whatever merit his pictures may have possessed, he 
received little encouragement from the public or the press. 
For nine long years his pictures were returned to him 
unsold at the close of each annual exhibition. His parents, 
thrifty, watchful people, became alarmed at his want of 
success, and warmly advised him to abandon landscape 
painting and to take up portrait painting instead. They 
had the well-known example of Richard Wilson before 
their eyes; and they remembered, too, that their Suffolk 
neighbor, Thomas Gainsborough, had only been saved from 
want by his marvellous success as a portrait painter. But 
Constable turned a deaf ear to their warnings and solici- 
tude. There were just two men in all England who be- 
lieved in his ultimate success. One was his stanch friend 
and supporter, Archdeacon Fisher, and the other, the reso- 
lute painter himself. “I love every stile and stump and 
lane in the village,” he cried, “and as long as I am able to 
hold a brush, I shall never cease to paint them.” 

Constable was elected an Associate of the Royal Acad- 
emy in 1819. During all the years of his exhibitions thus 
far, it is doubtful if he had sold a dozen pictures from public 
galleries. But the time was soon to come when a picture 
painted by him was destined to have a profound influence 
upon the art of landscape painting in France, and to bring 
to the patient painter honor and immortality. This picture 
was first exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1821, and in 
the British Gallery in 1822, under the modest title, “ Land- 
scape—Noon,” but now known to all the world as “ The 
Haywain,’’—his masterpiece. It was returned from both 
exhibitions without public recognition or a purchaser. The 
next year, his friend, Archdeacon Fisher, wrote to Con- 
stable as follows: 

“T have a great desire to possess your ‘Wain;’ but I can- 


not reach what it is worth, and what you must have. 

It will be of the most value to your children by continuing 
to hang where it does, till you join the society of Ruysdael 
and Wilson and Claude; as praise and money will then be 
of no value to you personally, the world will liberally be- 
stow both.” The rest of the story issoon told. A French- 
man who had seen and admired the picture wanted to 
purchase it to take to France for exhibition there. After 
two years had passed with no purchaser at home, Constable 
reluctantly sold the “ Haywain ” and two other pictures to 
this persistent admirer for 2707; and so three years after 
its first exhibition in London, this great picture went to 
a foreigner for a song. On its arrival in Paris, it was ex- 
hibited at the Louvre, where it excited mingled consterna- 
tion and applause. As all the world knows, Constable 
received a Gold Medal from the king and had his pictures 
hung in the Salon of Honor. 

The French Government offered to buy the ‘ Haywain,” 
but the owner refused to separate it from the other two. 
This picture did not permanently remain in France. Its 
immediate history following the Exhibition is unknown. 
But in 1871, and again in 1886, it formed a part of the 
““Works of the Old Masters,” exhibited at Burlington 
House, London, and belonged to Henry Vaughan, Esq. 
It is related of this gentleman that, having been ap- 
proached with an offer of 10,0007 for the “ Haywain,” he 
replied: ‘If this picture is worth the sum you name, lI 
cannot longer afford to keep it; and when it leaves my 
possession, it shall go into the custody of the Nation.” 
Accordingly, in 1886, he presented it to the National Gal- 
lery. Alas, for the gifted painter! As his friend Fisher 
had once predicted, he had long before ‘“ joined the society 
of Ruysdael and Wilson and Claude,” and valueless to him 
were the praise and money his tardy countrymen were now 
eager to bestow. 


Although Constable made innumerable studies in the 
open air, it was his custom to paint his pictures wholly in 
his studio. His most important works, or, as he called 
them, his “six-foot canvases,” were often preceded by 
smaller finished pictures of the same subject, differing only 
in some minor detail, according as the point of observation 
was changed; yet in all essential respects, save size, they 
were the same. Owing to the fact that he seldom signed 
or dated his pictures, it is quite impossible to determine 
with entire accuracy the years in which many of them were 
painted. Indeed, it is said he was thirteen years in paint- 
ing ‘“ Waterloo Bridge.’”’ He freely used the palette knife, 
finding that it gave breadth and solidity to his masses and 
purity and splendor to his coloring. This is notably the 
case with his famous “ Waterloo Bridge,” which Leslie 
declared, ‘‘seemed as though painted with liquid silver and 
gold.” 

While the National Gallery contains a few of his most 
important pictures, and the Kensington Museum a valuable 
collection of his studies, it is nevertheless in private homes 
in England that one must look for the greatest number of 
representative specimens of hiswork. As the years roll on, 
his fame has increased wherever a love of nature is fostered 
in art; and although many an artist popular in his day has 
passed into oblivion, John Constable has survived and 
stands to-day among the great enduring landscape painters 
of the English race. 


JOHN CROME, “OLD CROME.” 
(1769—1821.) 


JOHN CROME, the son of a journeyman weaver, was 
born in a public house at Norwich, England, in 1769. He 
was called “Old Crome ”’ to distinguish him from his eldest 
son, John Bernay Crome, who was also a painter, but with- 
out the talent or reputation of his father. In early life, 
John Crome was a sign and coach painter, and gained 
a living at that occupation. A love of nature and a love 
of art carried his thoughts and aspirations beyond the nar- 
row confines of this mechanical drudgery, and he longed 
to become an artist worthy of the name. His poverty, 
however, prevented him from enjoying the instruction of 
living masters, and he therefore eagerly sought every 
opportunity of studying the masters who were dead. Of 
the old Dutch painters, the one whom he most admired 
was Hobbema. ‘“‘ Hobbema, my dear Hobbema, how I have 
loved you!”’ were the last words that fell from the dying 
painter’s lips. The opportunities afforded him for such 
improvement, however, were of rare occurrence, and he 
was happily led to the study of, nature herself, whom he 
found to be his best instructor, after the necessary knowl- 
edge of his craft had been acquired. 

While engaged in the occupation of teaching, it was his 
constant habit to take his pupils with him into the fields 
and woods to study nature there. A brother painter once 
met him in the fields, surrounded by a group of young 


people, and remarked to him: “ Why, I thought I had left 
you in the city engaged in your school.” “I am in my 
school,” Crome replied, ‘and teaching my scholars from 
the only true examples. Do you think,” pointing to a 
lovely distant view, “that you or I can do better than 
that?’’ For a long time Crome’s teaching brought him 
more returns than his landscapes, and he was obliged to 
combine the two to make a comfortable living. By and by 
his talents became known, and the families of influence in 
his neighborhood began to patronize him and give him com- 
missions for his-pictures. In 1803, when Crome was thirty- 
four years of age, he gathered about him a number of local 
amateurs and artists and founded “The Norwich Society 
of Artists,” some of whom have since become as popular 
in England as the more celebrated “Barbizon School” 
now is in France, He was its President and leading spirit 
and most distinguished member. He occasionally sent a 
picture to the Royal Academy, but his interests were 
centred in his native Norwich, where he had become a 
recognized authority in Art. He was a liberal contributor 
to the Exhibitions there, often sending as many as twenty 
pictures to their annual displays. 

John Crome and John Constable share somewhat with 
Thomas Gainsborough the honors of leadership in the 
English School of painting. It was this triumvirate who 
exercised upon English landscape art a more wholesome 
and potent influence than all other artists of their day 
combined. Says Ernest Chesneau: “Gainsborough and 
Crome had succeeded in bringing about a revulsion of 
feeling in the public mind with regard to the imitations 
of Italian scenery, and it was John Constable who had 
the glory of completing the work which they had com- 
menced.” * 

Allan Cunningham says of Crome: “All about him is 

* «The English School of Painters,” by Ernest Chesneau, p. 138. 


sterling English; he has no foreign airs or put-on graces ; 
he studied and understood the woody scenery of his native 
land with the skill of a botanist and the eye of a poet; to 
him a grove was not a mere mass of picturesque stems and 
foliage ; each tree claimed a separate sort of handling; 
he touched them according to their kind; with him an ash, 
hung with its silver keys, was different from an oak cov- 
ered with acorns. Nor was it his pleasure only to show 
nature silent and inanimate; to the grove he gave its ten- 
ants; to the glades their cattle and their cottages; nothing 
was mean, all was natural and striking.” * 

Crome also painted most delightfully harbor scenes and 
shipping. A picture of his, entitled “‘ Yarmouth Harbour,” 
was at one time exhibited at Burlington House. Cunning- 
ham, after speaking of its remarkable quality in other 
respects, says: 

“‘ Moreover, it is lifted above the commonplace by being 
set in a soft haze of yellow light, such as we see in many 
of Cuyp’s paintings. The scene, indeed, might well be 
taken for one of Cuyp’s views of Dordrecht, so masterly is 
its treatment of the mellow light of a warm, misty day.” 

The small picture in this collection, entitled “ Yarmouth 
Beach,” is a fair example of the style of painting just 
described. 

With the exception of a single trip to Holland and to 
Paris, Crome never left his native shores. His works are 
made up of thoroughly characteristic English subjects. 
For the most part they are taken from the neighborhood 
of Norwich and from Norfolk coast scenes. To the exhibi- 
tions of the “ Norwich Society of Artists’ he contributed 
no less than 290 examples. His works are for the most 
part in the possession of Norfolk homes. But while this 
self-taught, jovial painter found an appreciative patronage 
among the art-loving folk in and about his native town, it 

* « British Painters,” vol. iil., p. 171. 


was reserved for another generation of his countrymen to 
assign him his true position in landscape art. In his own 
day his fame was purely local, and it was not until an 
exhibition of his works was held at Burlington House that 
the world found out how great a master “ Old Crome” 
was. He is represented by five examples in the South 
Kensington Museum; and by three in the National Gal- 
lery. Two of the latter, “The Windmill’ and ‘ Mouse- 
hold Heath,” are so fine that they entitle him to rank 
among the great landscape painters of the world. 

John Crome died in 1821, after a few days of illness, in 
the fifty-second year of his age. 


JOHN SELL COTMAN. 
(1782—1842.) 


OF all the landscape painters of England, Richard Wilson 
alone excepted, there was probably no one less understood 
in his own day or less appreciated by the generation that 
came after him than John Sell Cotman. Nor is this to be 
wondered at. The greater part of his life he spent in etch- 
ing, in painting water colors, and asa teacher of drawing 
at King’s College School, London. His paintings in oil are 
comparatively few; he is by no means adequately repre- 
sented in any of the public galleries in Great Britain. His 
best pictures are scattered about in private collections in 
England; and their owners, for the most part, have not yet 
been tempted to part with them, notwithstanding the pres- 
ent interest in the paintings of the Norwich school. 

John Sell Cotman was born at Norwich, England, in 
1782. He was acontemporary of John Constable, but six 
years younger than the great Suffolk painter. His father 
was a well-to-do merchant, and desired to have his son fol- 
low the same business. It was the usual story; the son 
rebelled, the father yielded, and, when only fifteen years 
of age, the lad went to London to seek his fortune as a 
painter. There he met Girtin and Turner and De Wint; 
but Girtin was the one whose spirit he admired most. 
After some eight or nine years in London, with occasional 
visits to his native town, young Cotman returned to Nor- 
wich to settle down. Later on he went to Yarmouth, 


where he remained till 1823, when he returned to Norwich. 
It was during his twelve years’ stay at Yarmouth that he 
became a great lover of the sea and acquired an accurate 
knowledge of the various sailing crafts that plied the 
waters there. 

Cotman was a frequent contributor to the “ Norwich So- 
ciety of Artists,” was chosen its secretary, and was the 
most distinguished pupil of its founder, John Crome. In 
1834 the professorship of drawing in King’s College School, 
London, became vacant; and when the great Turner, one 
of its governors, was asked who was a fit man to fill it, he 
replied, ‘“‘Why, Cotman, of course.’ Cotman accepted the 
appointment, and went to London, where he died in 1842. 

While Cotman’s master is superbly represented in the 
National Gallery, it isa source of regret that Cotman has 
only two pictures there catalogued in his name. Of these 
the smaller one, ‘‘ Wherries on the Yare,’’ is about the size 
of the picture in this collection, and similar in composition, 
but not a moonlight. 

‘“Crome and Cotman are the glories of the Norwich 
School. Unlike in temperament, in character, in the scope 
and aim of their art, they are alike in possessing genius. 
Norwich has bred a great number of successful painters, 
but these two stand high above the rest.” * 


*« John Crome and John Sell Cotman,” by Lawrence Bingon, in 
The Portfolio, April, 1897, p. 5. 


e 


THOMAS BARKER. 
(1769—4 847.) 


“THOMAS BARKER (known as ‘Barker of Bath’), born 
1769, was an able artist whose style was based upon that of 
the old Dutch and Flemish masters. He painted chiefly 
landscape subjects, but occasionally portraits and historical 
pieces. His most popular picture was ‘The Woodman’; 
and he also painted a remarkable fresco, ‘The Massacre of 
the Sciotes,’ in his house at Bath, where he died in 1847. 
His works are bold and firm in outline and correct in draw- 
ing. 

Barker was a contemporary of John Constable, but he 
never reached the latter’s fame. 

In breadth of handling, in his firm grasp of the essential 
_ truths of nature, and especially in his rendering of clouds, 
he sometimes approaches the achievements of Constable, 
and not infrequently his finest pictures have been attributed 
to that master. He is represented in the National Gallery 
and in the South Kensington Museum. 


* George H.Shepherd, ‘‘ British School of Painting” (London, 1881), 
p- 24. : 


Sd 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE collection of pictures described in this catalogue 
cover nearly a century and a half of the history of pictorial 
art in England and France. They form a group of surpris- 
ing homogeneity, and indicate the interest, the judgment, 
and the taste of the gentleman who, for the last two decades, 
has been largely occupied with their selection. 

At a time when public interest was chiefly concentrated 
on the works of the French painters of the Barbizon School, 
Mr. William H. Fuller was already strongly attracted by 
similar qualities in the productions of certain English paint- 
ers of the last century. He recognized in their work the 
expression of those fundamental principles of art which at 
a later day characterized the paintings of the men of 1830. 
The exhibition of his pictures of the early English and the 
Barbizon School, at the Union League Club in February, 
1892, was a conspicuous event. For the first time in this 
country, and probably for the first time anywhere, these 
two schools of painting were adequately and comprehen- 
sively illustrated and contrasted in a single gallery. The 
natural result was an awakening in this country of a new 
and active interest in English art—an interest which has 
increased year by year, as the mefits of these painters 
became better known—until at the present time it is a 
matter of no inconsiderable difficulty to secure fairly 
representative examples (to say nothing about works of 
supreme importance) of this admirable English School. 

Apart from the differences in technique—the handwrit- 


ing, so to speak, of the individual painters—the pictures 
of both schools in this collection have strong parallel charac- 
teristics; and it is a liberal education in art to compare the 
notable qualities of the different examples, to trace the 
origin of the methods of expression, and to observe by 
what different roads the same goal has been reached. A 
collection of greater numerical strength would, of course, 
illustrate more fully the minor steps of progress and indi- 
cate more clearly, in some instances, the ripe power of the 
artists. In the English School, however, the art of Wilson, 
Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Constable are epitomized by 
notable examples, while the lesser names are illustrated 
each by a choice specimen of the painter’s work. The pict- 
ures of the Barbizon School are too well known to invite 
discussion here. Michel, Dupré, Daubigny, and Diaz are 
worthily represented, while Troyon’s “Cows in the Past- 
ure”? and Rousseau’s “ Charcoal-Burners’ Hut” are famous 
in two continents. 

By eliminating from his collection everything which was 
incongruous and disturbing, Mr. Fuller has made it possi- 
ble to study these masterpieces with placid mind and 
unruffled spirit, conditions which alone make the highest 
enjoyment of art possible. In comparison with the refined 
qualities of these pictures, the jaded drama, the pseudo 
sentiment, and the hysterical novelty of much that is promi- 
nent in art at the present time are wearisome and offen- 
sive. A sweeping criticism of modern painting on these 
lines would be manifestly unjust and unwarranted by fact. 
But it must be apparent to all that the painters represented 
here had high ideals, and that they consecrated every 
gift and power they possessed to the attainment of their 
aspirations. Their success was the glory of their era, and 
their works are to this day a part of the art treasures of 
the world. 

FRANK D. MILLET, N.A. 


No. J. 


GEORGES MICHEL. 
17631848. 


The Hillside. 


Height, 914 inches. Width, 13 inches. 


A HILLSIDE in deep shadow, showing the outlines of a 
cottage and a clump of trees against a luminous grey sky, 
under which stretches away a sunlit plain. The simple 
contrast of a mass of shadow against a mass of light has 
furnished the artist with a motive sufficiently interesting to 
call out great intensity of feeling, expressed by his direct- 
ness of treatment and energetic touch. Deep and rich in 
color and almost unique in tone, it testifies to an enthusi- 
astic love of nature and unwavering respect for truth. 


No. 2. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
1776—183%, 7 


A Suffolk Water Mill. 


Height, 18% inches. Width, 12% inches. 


BETWEEN overhanging elms, their slender, boughs meet- 
ing overhead like the arches of a Gothic cathedral, is seen a 
large mill with latticed windows, on the banks of a dashing 
mill stream into which the water from an overshot wheel 
plunges from an opening in the building. A warm, tender 
sky half veiled with summer clouds is reflected in the whirl 
of the waters and throws a soft radiance over the whole 
scene. It is painted with confident freedom, with precision 
of touch, and a fine appreciation of the charm of the sim- 
ple landscape which is found in the artist’s more important 
works. Its color is rich and full, mellow and refined, and 
its sentiment is one of affection, prompted by the natural 
beauty of the subject and the personal associations of the 
painter’s early life. 


The Morning Post, April 6, 1888, speaks of this picture: 
««¢ A Water-mill, Suffolk,” . . . asmall but admirable example 
of John Constable.” 


No. 3. 


GEORGES MICHEL. 
17631848. 


Road through the Woods. 


Height, 21 inches. Width, 26% inches. 


MICHEL, in his studies of ephemeral and emotional effects, 
proved beyond dispute his sympathetic knowledge of cer- 
tain great truths of nature, and recorded his observations 
with confidence and vigor and with a strong poetical feel.- 
ing. In this picture, however, he has chosen to proceed 
with more deliberate pace and to study the quiet beauties 
of repose rather than the dramatic character of wild skies 
and flashing sunlight. A road winds through a glade in 
the forest where sturdy, well-rooted trees stand in digni- 
fied masses, rich in summer foliage, shimmering in the 
enveloping glow of midday, which radiates from the warm 
sky. The shadows are intense but nourished in tone and 
rich in color, and in the frankly touched foliage there is 
great charm of modelling and variety of texture and tint. 
It is straightforward, unconventional, and appreciative. 


No. 4. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
1776—1837. 


In Dedham Vale. 


Height, 12 inches. Width, 16 inches. 


THIS quiet, unpretentious landscape is of small dimen- 
sions, but is large in line and dignified in arrangement. A 
rough lane, with several figures of country folk, leads across 
the broken foreground and winds away in the direction of 
a distant tree-screened village. Dedham Cathedral, with 
solid square tower, forms a prominent landmark in the 
pleasant region of fertile farms. From low hillocks of the 
common in the near foreground, feathery trees with grace- 
ful, slender stems stand boldly up against the cool grey 
sky, and these rounded forms are echoed and repeated in 
receding planes on either side. The sunlight effect is 
strong, but at the same time reserved; the shadows which 
break the broad mass of light are clear and luminous, and 
the general tone of the picture refined and delightful to 
the eye. 


‘‘The small landscape by Constable, ‘In Dedham Vale,’ with figures 
and a dog in the foreground and Dedham church in the distance, is 
a pure and untouched example of the painter.”—-GEORGE H. SHEP- 
HERD, author of “ British School of Painting.” 


This picture was noticed in the London Daily News, November 12, 
1888, and in the Manchester Courier of the same date. The latter 
paper, in its issue of November 22, characterizes this picture as a 
work of ‘‘superlative beauty.” 


The London Zimes says of it: ‘‘A charming woodland scene of the 
purest possible colour.” 


The Morning Post pronounces ‘‘In Dedham Vale” a ‘fine example 
of Constable’s delightful art,” 


No. 5. 


JOHN CROME (Old Crome). 
1769—1821. 


Yarmouth Beach. 


Height, 1514 inches. Width, 19 inches. 


A. MELLOW, sunny, amber-toned landscape, exquisitely 
drawn and full of sentiment. The graceful sweeping line 
of a flat beach leads the eye to the middle distance on the 
right, where a fishing village with boats pulled high above 
the water shows a picturesque and interesting outline 
against the focus of light in the midsummer sky. The long 
low pier extends far into the bay, and numerous fishing 
boats drift on the tide. From the foreground where fisher 
folk with horses and piled-up baskets make a group of 
great interest and of value to the composition, even to the 
extreme distance where the sea meets the sky in delicate 
contrast, there are everywhere incidents of life and activity. 
The effect of light is broad, and the warm, full sunshine is 
admirably given. The shadows are rich and glowing with 
reflected light, and the drawing of every object is precise, 
firm, and accurate. The color of the sky is most subtle and 
delicate; the modelling of the cloud masses is true and 
intricate; the clear light of the foreground and the faint 
haze which envelopes the objects against the sky are 


rendered with great fidelity and exquisite sensibility; and 
the picture, though small in canvas, is large in expression 
and full of beauty. 


“Unfortunately we have not any of his Norfolk coast scenes, either 
in the National Gallery or at South Kensington ; and these, to my mind, 
are some of the happiest productions of his art, especially as regards 
the sky, an element that always plays an important part in Crome’s 
pictures, throwing, in many of these coast views, a weird sort of 
poetry over the common-place of the scene.”—Cunningham’s “ British 
Painters,” vol. iii., p. 177. 


No. 6. 


GEORGES MICHEL. 
17631848. 


The Plain of Montmartre. 


Height, 20% inches. Width, 29 inches. 


THIS is an amplification of the motive of the large picture, 
the “ Windmill of Montmartre,” painted at the same place, 
but more comprehensive in extent and somewhat more 
reserved in effect. Two windmills are perched on a rocky 
summit on the left of the picture, overlooking a wide 
plain where the city of Paris lies half hidden by surround- 
ing groves of trees. A narrow band of sunlight advances 
across the plain, touching with glittering warmth the 
river Seine, which here and there is seen as it curves 
away towards the horizon. A swirl of dark, trailing storm 
clouds sweeps across the heavens, suggesting the quick 
approach of the flashing sunlight. Above and below, a 
brighter stratum of vaporous soft clouds veils the sky and 
by a delicate gradation meets the horizon, where line after 
line of low hills recede and are finally lost in the distance. 
There is an impressive feeling of space, of atmosphere, of 
evanescent effect in the landscape, which is the result of 
faithful study of nature on the spot. 


No. 7. 


RICHARD WILSON, R.A. 
{714—1782. 


View Near Oxford. 


Height, 28 inches. Width, 34% inches, 


A CLASSICAL idealization of an English landscape not 
only in arrangement but in effect. Against a rich and 
warm sunset sky rise sombre masses of gnarled and twisted 
trees overhanging a lane. Between the trees a long vista 
stretches to the sunset, and on the right are seen the Gothic 
towers of the university town, half hidden by the low hills 
beyond a river which breaks the middle distance. Sunlight 
tips with warm color the clouds, illumines the distance, and 
gleams on the trees and hillsides. The picture is treated 
with great precision of touch, and while it is in a way a literal 
rendering of a view, it has the special charms which belong 
to the poetical interpretation of natural effects and lines. 


‘*LONDON, Dec, 12, 1891. 
“To MR. SHEPHERD. 

“Dear Sir: The picture by Wilson shown to me to-day represents in 
my opinion an English View—and in all probability the Suburbs of 
Oxford. The figures are not in any way classical, but are Italian. 
Wilson very often placed these figures in his English Landscapes. 

“7 remain, 
“Yours truly, 


‘«« ALGERNON GRAVES.” 


No. 8. 


JOHN SELL COTMAN. 
$782—1842. 


Moonlight on the Yare. 


Height, 35 inches. Width, 24 inches. 


A RIVER scene, recalling in character of arrangement, in 
the ripe mellow quality of the color, and in the truth of 
effect the work of the early Dutch painters of similar sub- 
jects. An expanse of limpid water is dotted with bluff- 
bowed craft, half drifting, half sailing in the mellow light 
of a summer moon which struggles through the clouds near 
the low horizon, making across the water a track of silver 
sheen. The surface of the water, reflecting the disk of the 
moon, sails and hulls of the boats, trees, houses, and craft 
in the distance, is broken by ripples of the tide, tremu- 
lously moving towards a shallow shore. Hereand there the 
sharp light on the edge of a sail shines clear and crisp, while 
over the whole scene the all-enveloping glow of moon- 
light throws a veil of mystery and exquisite charm. The 
spirit of the hour is suggested with refinement and truth, 
and the picture has an exalted quality of poetical feeling 
which is soothing, restful, and suggestive. The lofty sky 
is soft, nebulous, and airy, the perspective of the water and 
the distant shores is most admirable, and the incidents in 
the composition are not only charming in conception, but 
fascinating in the method of execution. 


No. 9. 
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 


4727-3768. 


Portrait of an Officer. 


Height, 25 inches. Width, 30 inches. 


A YOUNG officer in a uniform of scarlet, white, and blue, 
trimmed with silver lace, lounges ona bank near a pollarded 
tree. From under a large cocked hat foppish curls frame 
in his half humorous face. An ample white satin waist- 
coat, rich lace at his sleeves, a slender dress sword held 
in his left hand, and brilliant buckles sparkling on his shoes, 
give further indications of the character and rank of the 
wearer, and complete a costume which has been painted 
with great care and skill. Behind the figure, and in pleas- 
ant contrast to the striking colors and glitter of the uni- 
form, is seen a bit of quiet, pastoral landscape, with a 
distant, tree-sheltered cottage, a winding path with country 
woman and donkey, and a sky full of light and fleecy clouds. 
The whole picture is treated with light but accurate touch, 
and is notable for choice qualities of tone and color. 


No. J0. 


JULES DUPRE. 
18{12—1889. 


Le Cours d’Eau. 


Height, 15 inches. Width, 21% inches. 


IN the foreground and middle distance a broken sheet of 
water reflects a brilliant sunburst through the clouds late 
inan afternoon of midsummer. The effect is intensified by 
a tall tree which lifts its dark branches against the focused 
light of the sky. Cattle feed in the pastures on the left, 
and irregular groups of trees lead the eye to low hills in 
the horizon. The sky is intricate in modelling and exquis- 
itely delicate in color, and the vigorous contrasts of light 
and shade are rendered with the solidity characteristic of 
the artist’s work. 


The following letter was addressed to M. Charles Sedelmeyer, Paris, 
from whom this picture was purchased by the present owner: 
“PaRIs, March 14, '89. 
«SiR: My father would like to exhibit at the Paris Exposition a 
painting of his, ‘Le Cours d’Eau,’ purchased by you at the Dobbé sale. 
He begs me to make that request of you. I can only hope for a favor- 
able reply. I would appreciate an answer at your earliest convenience, 
so as to enter the painting in the catalogue. 
“Very faithfully yours, 
“JULES DUPRE, fils.” 


No. Jf. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
17761837. 


Summer Morning.—Dedham Vale. 
Height, 14 inches. Width, 22 inches. 


IN this picture the obstacles to an agreeable treatment of 
an extensive view from a height seem to have been entirely 
overcome; they have been treated in such a natural 
and simple way that it is scarcely possible to believe that 
the artist ever considered them as difficulties at all. From 
a rough hillside, where a neglected plow testifies to the 
futility of wide cultivation, is seen across a pleasant vale 
a second slope, with a cottage nestling among large trees. 
Beyond, a broad stretch of fertile meadow land, with 
meandering stream and distant village, tempts the vision 
towards the far line of the high horizon where the gleam of 
water in full light contrasts with the dull grey of the 
cloudy sky. The foreground is full of rich warm browns, 
relieved and accented by the vigorous spots of color in the 
milkmaid and cattle on the hillside; the middle distance is 
mellow and sunny, and the sky, cool by contrast, is full in 
modelling with a brilliant effect of eos sunlight through 
a narrow rift in the clouds. 

“In the coach yesterday, coming from Suffolk, were two gentlemen 
and myself, all strangers to each other. In passing the vale of Dedham, 
one of them remarked, on my saying it was beautiful, ‘ Yes, sir, this is 
Constable’s country.’ I then told him who I was, lest he should spoil 
it."—Letter of John Constable to Lucas, October 1, 1832. (Leslie’s 
“Life of Constable,” p. 85.) 


No. 12. 


GEORGES MICHEL. 
1763—1848. 


The Horseman. 


Height, 23 inches. Width, 29 inches. 


THE solidity and flatness of the earth, the airy loftiness 
and lightness of the sky, and, withal, the mystery of nature 
even under the searching light of full day, have been studied 
with intelligence and attention, and are suggested with 
great skill in this picture. Across a wide plain, partly 
covered with masses of trees, a winding path, broadening 
into a sandy waste in the foreground, leads off toward 
distant farms. The horizon is low, and the extensive area 
of the luminous sky is broken by large storm clouds moving 
in majestic procession across the expanse of the heavens. 
A horseman in a red cloak, peasants with a dog, and other 
wayfarers along the road give incidents of human interest to 
the scene. 


No. 13. 


THOMAS BARKER (of Bath). 
1769—1847. 


The Road to the Mill. 


Height, 30 inches. Width, 25 inches. 


OVERHANGING a country lane which leads across a com- 
mon to distant cottages and windmill, twin trees of majestic 
size rise in noble mass against a turbulent, storm-threaten- 
ing sky and cast a deep shadow on the broken ground. 
Patches of sunlight here and there, suggesting rapidly 
moving clouds, accent the foreground, enliven the middle 
distance, and carry the vision beyond the distant blue hills 
to the horizon. The sturdy trees with masses of dense and 
rounded foliage contrast in strong opposition of tone and 
color with the piled-up masses of cumulus clouds which fill 
the sky. The picture is remarkable for the luminosity of 
its sky, richness of color, robust strength, and the direct- 
ness with which it has been painted. 


“Here is a sylvan landscape, ‘The Road to the Mill,’ a picture of 
rare beauty, as free as true in handling, and thoroughly English in 
the expression of the scenery. This picture has qualities so suggestive 
of both Constable and Barker of Bath, that it is difficult to determine 
to which master it should be assigned. . . . By whomsoever painted 
it is a capital landscape.”—The Morning Post, April 2, 1889. -» 


«Almost as good in color as a Gainsborough.”—London Zimes, 
November 9g, 1887. 


No. j4. 


CHARLES-FRANCOIS DAUBIGNY. 
18171878. 


Evening on the Marne. 


Height, 1514 inches. Width, 26% inches. 


No modern artist has observed with finer perception 
and recorded with more precision the fleeting effects of 
nature, the ephemeral charm of the hour of day than Dau- 
bigny in this graceful composition. On the broad surface 
of a placid river is reflected the iridescent beauties of a 
summer sky near the moment of sunset, while the air is 
still warm and balmy. On the left, the river bank, with a 
fringe of willows, a group of slender feathery trees and 
lush, sunlit verdure, is thrown into cool shadow, suggesting 
the rapid approach of early twilight; across the stream are 
rich meadows with clumps of rank-growing trees, and in 
the near foreground a flock of ducks make their way 
towards the grateful refuge of the shore. The mirror- 
like water is as tender and sweet in color as the pol- 
ished surface of a shell, and the fleecy sunlit clouds near 
the horizon are as delicate as the petals of arose. Subtle 
contrasts of the pale blue sky against the grey of the clouds 
accent and enliven the interest in the masses of vapor, but 
do not disturb the exquisite harmony of color. The rich, 
deep shadows of the trees on the left, and the warm glint 
of sunlight, which falls on the meadows and trees beyond, 
give force and solidity to the landscape. 


No. 15. 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
1727—1 788. 


The Edge of the Common. 
Height, 25 inches. Width, 30 inches. 


THIS picture has given the artist an opportunity to em- 
ploy not only the warmest tones of his palette, but has 
demanded, as well, all his skill and knowledge in the happy 
treatment of a composition complex in line and vivid in 
effect. The subject was found at the spot where a path 
winds over the rough banks of the common and leads to 
the cultivated land beyond through an opening in a dense 
growth of trees. The light from a brilliant but cloudy sky 
filters through the branches of the trees on the right, touch- 
ing with crisp accents the farmer with his pack horses, the 
rustic fence, and a gnarled tree-trunk on the left. It falls 
full and clear on a hillock in the very middle of the com- 
position, which glows with warm, tremulous color. This 
intense light reflects into near shadows, throws into high 
relief the figures of men and the fallen tree-trunks in the 
_ foreground, and harmonizes all objects with its sunny glow. 
The broad and playful touch, the grace of the lines, the 
style, which is recognizable in every part of the picture, 
give a delightful charm to the whole—a charm which is 
sustained and enhanced by wonderful richness of color and 
depth of tone. 


« A fine example of the rather rare landscape-art of Thomas Gains- 
borough.”—The Morning Post, November 10, 1890. 


No. 16. 


NARCISO DIAZ. 
18081876. 


Pool at Fontainebleau. 


Height, 1634 inches. Width, 21% inches. 


A FLAT, open country, broken by sedges and rocks, and a 
shallow pool in the foreground, in which are reflected the 
floating clouds of the sky. In the middle distance, on the 
right, there stands a little group of trees, some of whose 
branches are touched with faint yellow color, indicating the 
near approach of autumn. On the left, another group, 
darker in color, suggest by their leaning trunks the prevail- 
ing sweep of the winds across the open space. The rank 
grass and sedge are yellow and sear, and the summer is 
almost gone. Along the horizon a low range of wooded 
hills terminates the landscape and presents an agreeable 
outline against the sky. Overhead dark, ominous clouds 
are hanging, while below them a burst of sunlight breaks 
through their gloom, glorifying the lower clouds and filling 
the landscape with a flood of light. The color of the fore- 
sround, although subdued, is full of harmonies. The color 
of the sky and the modelling of the clouds are equally fine, 
and the whole picture inviting from every point of view. 


No. 17. 


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. 
17234792. 


Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Barrington. 


Height, 3114 inches. Width, 27% inches. 


THE head and bust of a lady with her face turned slightly 
to the right, and her eyes, dreamy and introspective in ex- 
pression, following the direction of the head. From the 
sloping shoulders a xegligé pink silk jacket, trimmed with 
ermine, falls away in simple lines, disclosing a fair, round 
neck and a low-cut white satin bodice trimmed with lace 
and pearls. A pink ribbon, fastened to the dark, closely 
braided hair by a string of pearls, straggles almost coquet- 
tishly over the right shoulder. An oval, painted mat cuts 
the figure at the waist and above the elbow. The naive 
and lifelike expression is fascinating, and the personality of 
the sitter is rendered with unmistakable fidelity. The 
color is full and warm, with its original freshness mellowed 
and enriched by time—qualities which fortunately belong to 
other examples of the artist’s first manner. 


The Morning Post, November Io, 1890, says of this picture: 

“Sir Joshua Reynolds’ likeness of ‘The Hon. Mrs. Barrington,’ is 
the counterfeit presentment, still in perfect preservation, of a lady 
whose brilliant beauty now only survives in this matchless memorial.” 


No. 18. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
1776—13837. 


Windermere Lake. 


Height, 24 inches. Width, 34 inches. 


A MOST difficult problem of light, solved with fidelity and 
skill, and treated in a bold and effective manner. The 
view across the lake, well-known in tradition and in poetry, 
has been modified somewhat to meet the requirements of 
agreeable composition. The morning sun is shining full in 
the eye of the spectator, from a sky veiled with fleecy opales- 
cent clouds. In the middle distance the lake shimmers at 
the foot of a barrier of rigid mountain forms and stretches 
away far into the distance on the left, where the hills blend 
together and become lost in the glow of the summer sun- 
light. The foreground, which is mostly in shadow, is ac- 
cented by tall and graceful trees which rise on either side, 
making a valuable foil to the intense light which every- 
where pervades the picture. The influence of Turner is so 
strongly seen, not only in the effect of light, but in the 
scheme of color, that it is scarcely necessary to call atten- 
tion to this element of the artistic inspiration of this 
remarkable picture. But while the painter has been keyed 
up to the successful solution of a problem of light which 


might have had its inspiration from another source, Con- 
stable’s own individuality is unmistakably stamped on 
every inch of the canvas. 


“In 1808 he [Constable] exhibited at the Royal Academy two 
pictures, ‘A Scene in Westmoreland,’ and ‘Windermere Lake.’” 
Leslie’s ‘‘ Life of Constable,” p. 9. 


The Morning Post, of April, 2, 188g, says of this picture: ‘‘Among 
a group of Constables distinguished for characteristic beauty of colour, 
grace of composition, and masterly treatment of atmosphere and aerial 
perspective, may be mentioned ‘Sunrise, Windermere,’ a work which 
was probably painted during the artist’s two months’ visit to the Lake 
District, and which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807.” 
The date is an error. It was in 1808. 


No. J9. 


JULES DUPRE. 
1812—14 889. 


Cattle Drinking. 


Height, 26inches. Width, 21% inches. 


IN a broad, flat meadow under a sky flashing sunlight 
through a cloud-rift, two cows have come to a pool where 
pollard willows grow in the marshy soil, and rank grass 
thrives in abundance. The frank, solid, masculine treat- 
ment and the skilful arrangement of light have ennobled 
a simple motive and given to it exceptional qualities 
of breadth, dignity, and vigor. The sky, showing only a 
small patch of blue in the upper part, is perfect in model- 
ling and refined in color; the greens of the verdure are 
luscious and warm, and the sunlight which touches the 
white cow, the grass, and the tree-trunks is intense and 
vivid in strength, and yet is in mellowed unison with the 
rest of the picture. The cows are merely an incident in 
the landscape and are only suggested in form, and the eye 
sweeps past them over the extended field until it finally 
rests upon the sunlit sky, filled with moving clouds, whose 
beauty is intensified by the open space of blue with its 
illimitable depths beyond. 


No. 20. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
1776—1837. 


Weymouth Bay. 


Height, 22 inches. Width, 30 inches. 


IN this literal portrait of a seaside landscape Constable 
has shown his mastery of his materials in a surprisingly 
truthful and intensely interesting study of a motive sim- ~ 
ple in effect but complicated in line. A succession of 
rolling hillsides, broken by fields and pasture lands, full of 
incidents of rural life, stretches away on the right, round 
the irregular sweep of the bay, to the distance, where a low 
spit of land, terminated by a promontory, projects far into 
the sea, which is dotted here and there by sails. The sky 
is filled with cumulus clouds—a harmony of delicate grey 
tones; and on the left a darker mass of vapor casts a half — 
shadow, half reflection, on the surface of the water. There 
is about an equal area of sky and earth in the composition, 
a great sense of airy loftiness in the one part, and of solid- 
ity, relief, and perspective of line and tone in the other. 
The anatomy of the earth and the drawing and intricate 
modelling of the receding forms are most admirable. The 
color is reserved and choice but not without strength 


and richness, and the general tone of the picture refined 


and quiet. 
‘CH AMPSTEAD, October 23rd, 1821. 


“My DEAR FISHER. . . . That landscape painter who does not 
make his skies a very material part of his composition, neglects to avail 
himself of one of his greatest aids. . . . The sky is the source of 
light in nature, and governs everything ; even our common observa- 
tions on the weather of every day are altogether suggested by it. The 
difficulty of skies in painting is very great, both as to composition 
and execution; because, with all their brilliancy, they ought not to 
come forward, or, indeed, be hardly thought of any more than extreme 
distances are; but this does not apply to phenomena or accidental 
effects of sky, because they always attract particularly. I may say 
all this to you, though you do not want to be told that I know very 
well what I am about, and that my skies have not been neglected, 
though they have often failed in execution, no doubt, from an over 
anxiety about them, which will alone destroy that easy appearance 
which nature always has in all her movements.”—Letter of John Con- 
stable addressed to his intimate friend and patron, Archdeacon Fisher. 
(See Leslie’s ‘‘ Life of Constable,” p. 29.) 


‘39, OLD BOND STREET, LONDON, W., Fuly 12, 1888. 


‘“DEAR SIR: ‘The Weymouth Bay’ by John Constable is a well- 
known example of that distinguished artist, and was formerly in the 
possession of his sister. 

«Yours very faithfully, 


“Wn. AGNEW. 
«'W. H. FULLER, Esq.” 


No. 21. 


CHARLES-FRANCOIS DAUBIGNY. 
181 7—1878. 


The Cliff at Villerville. 
Height, 20 inches. Width, 32 inches. 


THE simplicity of this composition is not the least of its 
charms. The skilfully chosen proportion of sky to earth, 
the well-balanced accents, the subdued but harmonious 
color, its luminosity, and its perfect unity, all testify to 
highly developed taste in arrangement, and to a rare faculty 
of rendering the charms of nature in her quiet moods. A 
broken, gently sloping hillside, with cattle feeding; low 
shrubs and stunted trees; the roofs of cottages suggesting 
the village half-hidden behind the escarpment; a stretch of 
placid water further away; the lines of low hills across the 
mouth of the Seine; and over all a great, simple, grey sky 
full of beautifully modelled cloud forms—all these are the 
elements of a picture that is a marvel of delicate and refined 
color. A single note of intense blue in the vaporous cur- 
tain gives a valuable accent in exactly the right place, and 
its echo is found in one or two tiny scuds, in the sails of 
fishing boats, in the light on the feeding cattle and in the 
blossoming gorse on the hillside. The distance itself, 
scarcely more than a monotonous line of flat hills, becomes, 
under Daubigny’s sympathetic touch, a passage of fascinat- 
ing variety and charm. The whole painting is notable for 
its light and facile treatment, for remarkable refinement 
of color, and for distinction of tone. 


No. 22. 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
{727—1788. 


The Market Cart. 


Height, 20 inches. Width, 24% inches. 


A TYPICAL summer day—brisk, flashing with sunlight, 
uncertain in temper. From the foreground a country road 
winds between rough hillocks on the left, leading towards a 
distant village. On the right a group of trees shade a tile- 
roofed building, against which an old pear tree is strongly 
relieved by the flicker of sunlight on leaf and trunk, and by 
subtle distinctions of tone in the shadow. A great white, 
dome-shaped cloud, brilliant in light, comes in sharp con- 
trast with dark-green tree-tops in the middle of the picture, 
while the rest of the sky is partly covered with dark, hover- 
ing clouds. The whole strength of the palette and the full 
scale of colors have been employed in treating this staccato 
effect of light; the greens are full of variety and richness 
both in sunlight and in shade; the broken earth is as deep 
and strong in color as an oriental carpet, and the texture 
is rendered with the firm but caressing touch so characteristic 
of the painter. The market cart gives a name to the pict- 
ure and at the same time furnishes a pleasant note in the 
composition; but the great moving purpose of the painter 


was to present a striking opposition between the dark, rich 
greens of the dominant features of the landscape and a 
great white cloud, whose brilliancy they heighten as it 
floats away in a pale-blue, fathomless sky. 


“The landscape by Thomas Gainsborough, entitled ‘The Market 
Cart,’ has been for some time a part of my private Collection. It is 
an early picture, showing the influence of the Dutch painters, and espe- 
cially Wynants. It is nevertheless a thoroughly genuine, untouched, 
and brilliant example of this English master.”—Martin H. Colnaghi, 
Marlborough Gallery, London. 

This picture is perhaps the one mentioned in Fulcher’s ‘Life of 
Gainsborough,” page 229. The size given in Fulcher’s ‘“‘ List of Gains- 
borough’s Works” is 19x24 inches, which is probably the sight-size, 
while the size given above is canvas measurement. 


No. 23. 


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. 
1723-1792. 


The Duchess of Ancaster. 


Height, 25 inches. Width, 21 inches. 


THE accessories in this portrait are so carefully subor- 
dinated that they may almost escape notice in the intricate 
harmony of rich, warm greens, blues, and greys which 
envelope the head and bust and throw this part into high 
relief in light and color. The head is inclined towards the 
left shoulder ; the face is seen in full three-quarter view, and 
the eyes, keen and vital in expression, look straight out of 
the picture. The dress, the hair with its leaf ornament, 
and the gloved hands are sketchy in treatment, but the 
flesh is modelled with great solidity and is a marvel of 
freshness, of richness, and refinement of color and of soft 
texture. It is interesting to note the artist’s preoccupation 
with the method of treatment and to find that his sense of 
character was no less strong than his love of technique, 
for the individuality of the sitter remains always a promi- 
nent quality of the portrait. Like some other works in 
his first manner, it retains its original charm of color. 


‘‘ LONDON, September 24th, 1891. 
“T believe the picture to be a portrait of the Duchess of Ancaster 
and very likely done at the time when Sir Joshua painted the full- 
length portrait of the same lady so well-known by the mezzotint 
engraving therefrom. It is in a beautiful state of preservation. A 
more interesting example of the master than the picture you have 
purchased you could not possibly possess. 


‘SW. AGNEW. 
Bavett, FULLER, Esq.” 


On the back of the frame of this picture is an old paper which reads 
as follows: 

«« An original portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, given by him to my 
grandmother, his niece, and by her left to my Aunt Harriet, presented 
to me by Major Jones who married Miss Harriet Gwatkin my niece. 

| [Signed] 
“31 Dec., 1856.” “C, R. GWATKIN. 


“LONDON, Dee. 12, ’gI. 


«TO MR. SHEPHERD. 

“Dear Sir: I consider the portrait of a lady shown to me to-day 
to be a portrait of Mary Anne, Countess of Buckinghamshire. There 
is also a full-length portrait of this lady belonging to the Marquess of 
Lothian, also painted by Gainsborough. I remain 


Yours truly, 
‘‘ ALGERNON GRAVES.” 


ae 


No. 26. 


GEORGES MICHEL. 
{763—1848. 


Windmill of Montmartre. 


Height, 29 inches. Width, 40 inches. 


THIS bold and vigorous composition is distinguished by 
contrasts of exceeding force no less than by rare qualities 
of poetical suggestiveness. A sunburst of almost phenom- 
enal strength lights up the sky behind the dark mass 
of a windmill and surrounding buildings which rest on a 
rocky, tree-crowned summit in the gloom of a deep shadow. 
A band of warm sunlight in the middle-distance sweeps 
across a wide, undulating plain, disclosing many incidents of 
human interest ; while next to it, in cool opposition, a broad 
shadow extends into the space beyond, partly concealing 
the towers and roofs of the straggling city, and gradually 
softening in color until it mingles with the grey of the dis- 
tant horizon. The depth of the shadow in the foreground 
is relieved and accented by a sombre archway in the old 
building, into which no reflected light penetrates, while the 
intensity of the light effect is heightened by a lowering 
black cloud which hovers over the windmill. It is a simple 
phase of nature interpreted with directness, individuality, 
_and prodigious power. 


No. 27. 


RICHARD WILSON, R.A. 
17141782. 


Temple of Venus at Baiae. 


Height, 26 inches. Width, 38 inches. 


A CLASSICAL landscape of great beauty and style, dis- 
tinguished alike for taste and skill in arrangement and for 
refined and poetical sentiment. The chief object in the 
composition is an ancient ruin, towering in stately majesty 
above an arched sub-structure on the edge of a placid 
sheet of water, which winds among pleasant banks covered 
with verdure to the foot of a distant mountain. To the 
right, and relieved against a mass of dense, rich foliage, two 
slender trees stand sentinel over a fallen companion; to 
the left, a villa with tower and cypresses is seen above a 
bank covered with soft foliage, and in the foreground 
eraceful female figures await the return of a boat which 
floats on the mirror-like surface of the water. The hour is 
late afternoon, and from a sky southern in its warmth and 
richness of tone the sun throws a glowing light upon fleecy, 
vaporous clouds that reflect its heat and color. With the 
caressing and harmonizing glow of sunlight seems to come 
a sense of peace and grateful quiet, and this sentiment is 
quickened and encouraged by the grace and beauty of the 


composition no less than by the richness and choice quali- 
ties of color and by the consistent method of treatment. 


Allan Cunningham mentions this picture, ‘‘Temple of Venus at 
Baiae,” as one among others which “show the historical and poetical 
influence under which he [ Wz/son] wrought,”—Cunningham’s “ British 
Painters,” vol. i., p. 166. 


“LONDON, Sefz. 24, 1891. 


“Sir: The picture by Richard Wilson which you have purchased 
from my firm is one of the most perfect and characteristic examples 
that exist. It is in perfect condition. I congratulate you sincerely on 
having one of the finest works of our great Early-English landscape 
painters that can be found in any collection in the world. 

‘“‘ Believe me to remain, dear sir, 

‘“‘Your faithful servant, 
“WILLIAM AGNEW. 

«W. H. FULLER, Esq.” 


No. 28. 


JULES DUPRE. 
1812—1889. 


The Open Sea. 


Height, 24 inches. Width, 35% inches. 


THROUGH a confused and choppy sea, heading into a 
baffling wind, a fishing yawl is sailing along, tossing and 
plunging into the waves. Vivid sunlight is concentrated 
on the water near the craft, and this accent is echoed in 
the sky on the right of the canvas, where the darkened 
clouds catch on their edges a flash of light from the sun. 
Towards the low horizon the clouds hang lowering; the sea 
grows deep and ominous in color, and in the distance fish- 
ing boats are seen fighting against the wind. A broad rift 
in the clouds shows a pale blue sky behind, and gives an 
agreeable accent in the general harmony of silvery greys 
and sober blended tones. The picture is full of light, and 
is painted with great solidity, with a full brush and by a 
sure and sweeping hand. 


No. 29. 
CHARLES-FRANCOIS DAUBIGNY. 


1817—13878. 


Apple Blossoms. 


Height, 23 inches. Width, 33 inches. 


THE climax of luxuriant spring, when all vegetation is 
rank in growth, when every leaf is full and juicy, and 
the uncertain skies promise frequent showers, gave the 
artist his opportunity to record a phase of nature charac- 
teristic of the season, but seldom chosen to illustrate its 
suggestive charm. The picture shows the interior of an 
orchard with apple trees in late blossom, wild flowers and 
sedges fringing a shallow pool in the foreground, and 
beneath the trees a deep carpet of succulent grass where 
cattle graze and their attendant peasant women knit and 
gossip in the cool shade of the overhanging boughs. 
Beyond and between the tree-trunks there is a hint of 
farms and hillsides and villages in the distance; the broken 
sky transmits a grey light which still has some of the chill 
of early spring in its quality, although by its strength it 
suggests a belated day in May. The artist has given us 
the vigor and exuberant strength of spring rather than its 
joyous and cheery aspect. 


No. 30. 


JOHN CONSTABLE, R.A. 
1776—1837. 


The Lock. 


Height, 35 inches. Width, 29% inches. 


A SYMPATHETIC rendering of a motive familiar to every 
lover of English scenery, conceived with poetical feeling 
and treated with free and vigorous, yet precise and skilful, 
touch. In the immediate foreground a canal lock with 
rude gates, in the shadow of tall, overhanging elms, gives a 
strong note of contrast against the sunlit middle distance 
with the winding stream and the tiny village, where a square 
church tower rises above the rounded tree tops and an old 
stone bridge spans the water. There isagroup of men and 
horses at the lock, while a barge with colored sail and flut- 
tering pennant, and cattle in the meadows beyond, add the 
interest of rural life to the landscape. Beyond the lock, 
and to the left, the eye wanders with pleasure along the 
placid stream to the far, low hillsides covered with scat- 
tered trees and hedges shimmering in the warm atmosphere ; 
and a distant, warm, and delicate cloud-covered sky floods 
the peaceful scene with soft, embracing light. With no 
effort at dramatic effect, but with a controlling love of 
quiet, rural scenes and an eye keenly sensitive to the 


refinements of color and the subtle distinctions of tone, 
Constable carries the spectator with him by the contagion 
of his earnestness and fervor. 


This picture was part of the collection of Old Masters of the English 
School exhibited at ‘“‘The Grosvenor Gallery” during the winter of 
1887-8, illustrative of ‘“‘A Century of British Art, from 1737 to 1837.” 


No. 33. 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
17271788. 


Going to Market. 


Height, 36 inches. Width, 60% inches. 


A LANDSCAPE with a wide vista across a rolling fertile 
vale, with gleams of a distant river, and a multitude of 
trees, and habitations in the distance. In the foreground 
a country road leads out of the picture to the right, near 
rugged oaks growing in rough and broken ground; on 
the left, in deep but luminous shadow, a bank of earth 
with straggling fence and tall slender trees balances the 
composition. Along the road a white horse drawing a 
market cart, with the farmer’s wife perched among the 
baskets, is led by the farmer himself ; beside the cart scam- 
pers an active dog, and beyond a yokel drives cattle home 
from the fair. The sunlight from the left, which floods the 
sky and falls full upon the distance, strikes crisply upon the 
rustic group and throws it into solid relief. The woodland 
hillside on the right, with the sturdy trees and the slender 
young growth, and the dense masses of foliage beyond are 
masterly in the depth of tone and in charm of light. 


The Morning Post says of this picture : ‘“ The distinctive character 
of English scenery in its most sylvan and serene aspect is preserved 


with signal fidelity in a spacious Landscape by Thomas Gainsborough, 
On the right is a thicket of oak glistening with dew; in the distance 
are a lake and a ruined castle, and a cart drawn by a white horse and 
heavily laden with farm produce is passing slowly down a steep hill. 
The driver, his wife, and their little nag, are ‘Going to Market.’ 
The phrase serves for title of a picture which, excellent in all particu- 
lars of colour and composition, is also remarkable for a certain purity 
and pearliness of tone truthfully impressive of the unclouded freshness 
of early morning in summer.” 


The Umpire says: ‘‘ Messrs. Shepherd of King Street have about 
the most interesting show of all, including Gainsborough’s ‘ Going to 
Market,’ for sale for the first time for more than half a century, and in 
a splendid state of preservation.” 


No. 32. 


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. 
17231792. 


Portrait of Mrs. Knapp. 


Height, 30 inches. Width, 25 inches. 


A THREE-QUARTER length figure of a beautiful, alert, in- 
telligent young wife seated at a table with her head slightly 
leaning on her right hand. She is dressed in a loosely fit- 
ting, low-cut silk dress of rich madder red, confined at the 
waist by a blue sash, with full and flowing lace sleeves, and 
an ample over-dress trimmed with ermine. Her hair is 
drawn back from her high forehead and twisted around the 
head in a tight braid, with pearl ornaments at the top, and 
is tied with a wine-colored ribbon. Silk bands of similar 
color and texture, and likewise decorated with pearls, en- 
circle the throat and wrist, and soft lace breaks the line 
between the silk of the bodice and the bosom. The 
drapery is composed with great taste, and the flowing lines 
add much to the grace of the attitude. The choice color 
and beautiful modelling of the flesh in the full light; the 
luminous quality of the shadows on hand and neck; the 
fine proportions of the face, with the delicate, pointed chin; 
the sensitive, mobile mouth; the straight-cut nose; and the 


innocent, vivacious eyes, are no less remarkable than the 
painter's interpretation of the personality of his subject. 


The following letter from John Callcott Horsley, Esq., a Royal 
Academician, and Treasurer and Trustee of the Royal Academy, was 
addressed to Martin H. Colnaghi, Esq., from whom the ‘Portrait of 
Mrs. Knapp” was bought by the present owner: 


‘HIGH ROw, KENSINGTON, W., August 15, 1890. 


“ DEAR MR, COLNAGHI: 

“Apropos of that charming ‘Sir Joshua’ which belongs to Mr. 
Fuller, and which I understand you are now about to forward to him, 
it occurs to me to ask you to remind him of our conversation respecting 
the picture when we met under your hospitable auspices. Speaking, 
as I feel, most strongly as to the extreme beauty of the picture, I said 
how glad we should be to exhibit it at one of our Winter Gatherings 
of choice works by ‘ Past Masters’ at the Royal Academy. It seems 
almost preposterous to suggest that Mr. Fuller should send the picture 
specially from America for this purpose, and all I can venture to do is 
to remind him that he did not oppose my suggestion at the time I 
made it. Perhaps some day he would let the fair lady accompany 
him on a trip to the ‘Old Country’ (he might do worse!), and time 
his visit so as to have her with us at Burlington House during his stay, 
and see for himself how she would help to adorn our Galleries. 


«Yours sincerely, 
“J, CALLCOTT HORSLEY.” 


No. 33. 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
1727—1788. 


Halcyon Days in England. 


Height, 36 inches. Width, 62 inches. 


ON the left is a rugged hillside covered with shrubs and 
thick groves, relieved by the tall trunk of a half-dead 
tree. At the base of this hillock a cart track curves round 
below a succession of gentle slopes, and on the right a 
placid stream winds through the meadows past a village 
and pleasant farms until lost in the maze of the distance. 
The foreground is enlivened by figures and a variety of 
domestic animals, painted with frank and nervous touch. 
Over the great expanse of country a broad and lumin- 
ous sky rises high, with dark, rounded masses of vapor 
advancing across the area of delicate and distant blue, 
accented chiefly by a brilliant white cloud in contrast with 
the rich but sombre foliage of the hilltop. The hillsides 
with winding path, the shimmering ribbon of the stream, 
the suggestive and mysterious distance, and, indeed, the 
great dome of the sky, are impressive to a high degree, 
giving a wonderful sense of open air and space. 


No. 34. 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
1$727—1 788. 


Portrait of Lady Inness of Norfolk. 


Height, 30 inches. Width, 25 inches. 


APART from any considerations of execution, the indi- 
viduality of this portrait is interesting, engaging, and con- 
vincing. It isatype of a hyper-sensitive, refined woman, 
retiring in demeanor, with a certain pride of breeding and 
of race. The head and bust compose agreeably in an oval 
painted mat; and the general tone, which is quite as indi- 
vidual as the type of the sitter, has a beautiful amber 
quality, as if the sitter had been studied in the warm light 
of lateafternoon. The face hasa slightly downward inclina- 
tion, suggesting a feeling of shyness, which is emphasized 
by the fugitive, almost timid, expression of the almond- 
shaped eyes. Above and around the delicate oval of the 
face, masses of hair, blending softly with the skin, form a 
superstructure of the enormous size dictated by fashion; 
and great flowing curls embrace the neck on either side and 
ripple over the left shoulder. The loosely fitting dress is 
of a subdued yellow color, and lace in the neck softens the 
transition from the flesh to the crisp silk. The modelling 
of the flesh is exceedingly delicate and simple, and the 


color on the cheeks and the lips has lost none of its first 
freshness, 


‘‘LONDON, Aug. 6, ’97. 

‘DEAR SIR: . . . The picture of Lady Inness by Thomas 
Gainsborough, R.A.,I remember well. It was in our possession some 
five years ago. It is a characteristic work of the master, full of grace 
and refinement, and I have no hesitation in saying, when the picture 
was in our hands, we regarded it as of first-class quality, and a 
picture we should be glad to place in the collection of any esteemed 
client. I am, dear Sir, 

‘* Your obedient servant, 


‘* LOCKETT AGNEW. 
““W. H. FULLER, Esq.” 


No. 35. 


CONSTANT TROYON. 
{810—1865. 


Cows in the Pasture. 
(Vaches au Paturage.) 
Height, 38 inches. Width, 51 inches, 


Exposition Universelle 

a Vienne, 1873. 
Collection Baron Liebermann. 
Collection M. Secrétan. 


Two superb, massive cows of native breed, one black, the 
other red, are resting and chewing their cud late in the 
afternoon, under the foliage of three lofty trees, whose 
trunks and lower branches are alone visible in the picture. 
The pasture land is broad, solid, and flat, and stretches 
away towards the far-off, low-lying hills, whose outline is 
lost in the grey mystery of the sky. In the foreground, on 
the right, a long-limbed black dog stands motionless, watch- 
ing a goat whose feet are planted on a log, near which a 
tall peasant stands leaning on a staff with his back to the 
spectator. In the distance other cattle are seen, and beyond 
them and at the base of the hills a narrow strip of water 
appears, while over all a simply treated, luminous sky com- 
pletes this superb picture. 


The cattle are evidently modelled by aman who knew 
their anatomical structure to the smallest bone; he also 
knew how to give to them the breath of life, and to 
express with unmistakable exactness the indolence and 
stolidity of their race. They are painted with swift and 
confident strokes, and with such precision that one almost 
sees the measured heaving of their sides with each succeed- 
ing breath. The warm, slanting sunlight, which vibrates 
over the whole landscape, gives a lustre to their coats so 
life-like and true that we enjoy it without thought of 
the means of its production. The line of white, which 
begins on the face of the standing cow, is caught up on the 
neck and head of its companion, is echoed in the subdued 
color of the peasant’s blouse, is repeated on the log and on 
the breast of the goat, on the cattle in the distant field, and 
finally fades away in the objects at the base of the far-off, 
slumbering hills. In like manner the sombre blackness of 
the standing cow is repeated and balanced in the coat of 
the dog, on the right, and is seen again on the sides of the 
playful goat. 

The landscape itself is as beautifully composed as it is 
painted. Every object takes its right place in the reced- 
ing planes, and the eye ranges with delight from the cattle 
in the near foreground, over the extended field, to the far- 
off hills that melt away in the horizon. The color scheme 
is rich and varied and without a discordant note; light and 
air pervade the picture, and its sentiment is one of pastoral 
simplicity and grateful repose. 

Take it all in all, this picture not only illustrates Troy- 
on’s greatness in landscape art, but justifies his fame as the 
greatest cattle painter of his century and probably of the 
world. 


No. 36. 


THEODORE ROUSSEAU. 
18121867. 


The Charcoal-Burners’ Hut. 


(LA HUTTE DES CHARBONNIERS.) 
Height, 35% inches. Width, 45 inches. 


Collection Van den Ende. 
Collection Gunzburg. 
Collection M. Secrétan. 


‘A LOW-LYING, moss-covered ledge of rocks, stunted 
bushes, and half-hidden pools of water in the foreground; 
massive oak trees, glowing with sunshine and rising from 
a savage waste in the middle distance; a superb cloud- 
flecked sky,—these disclose the simple motive of this 
masterpiece of Théodore Rousseau. 

None of the conventional methods have been employed 
to give depth to the landscape and dignity to the lines of 
the composition; but the great artist,-with persistent and 
unwearying observation of nature, has so interpreted this 
scene as to place his performance upon the highest plain of 
naturalistic landscape art. 

The broken, rocky foreground ; the pools of water; the 
coarse, rank grasses; the scrubby undergrowth of bushes ; 
the great grey boulders,—all lead up to the majestic group 


of trees whose enormous branches extend half across the 
luminous, receding sky. Beneath this noble mass of trees, 
battle-scarred by a hundred winter storms, a straw-thatched 
hut is seen. To the right, an irregular opening leads to 
the warm summer sky, whose pellucid softness accents 
the rudeness of the scene below. The noonday sunshine 
reveals an infinite variety of rich greens, warm browns 
and greys, and gives to every inch of the canvas the charm 
of intricate complexity of color and a general sobriety, 
richness, and depth of tone. All the various objects in this 
great painting, the texture of the trunks and the sunlit 
branches of the trees, the moss-covered rocks, the tangle 
of bushes and sedges and grass, and withal a superbly 
modelled sky, have been expressed with as true and free 
and vigorous a brush as was ever wielded by the hand of 
man. 


Ten years ago, while ‘‘The Charcoal-Burners’ Hut” was in the 
Collection of M. E. Secrétan, at Paris, a distinguished American art 
critic wrote of it in these eloquent terms : 


‘‘Rousseau was another painter who preferred the impression of the 
whole to the detail of the part, and he too was a consummate techni- 
cian who started in his early work to paint finished pictures. No one 
will deny the almost perfect beauty of such works as the marsh scene 
at present in the Louvre ; but if we would find him in his full comple- 
ment of strength, we must turn to such canvases as ‘ The Charcoal- 
Burners’ Hut,’ in the possession of M. Secrétan. The name is of no 
consequence and is a misnomer at best, for the hut is an unimportant 
accessory to the picture, and is not at first seen. The subject of the 
painting is nothing but a simple landscape with huge trees in the cen- 
tre, under which we can study out a hut by dint of good imagination. 
In this truly great picture we find all the beauty of Rousseau’s diffused 
light, all his atmospheric effect, all his sense of chromatic harmony,— 
in short, all his masterly technique ; but there is something more to 
it than painter’s skill. Corot saw nature as a depth lighted by an 
all powerful sun; Daubigny saw it as a poetic paradise carpeted 
with greens and canopied with pearly greys ; Courbet looked upon it 


as a battle-field of warring elements; but Rousseau conceived it as 
that creation which has lasted for centuries, grand in strength, 
splendid in majesty, enduring in power, restful in mood. ‘ The 
Charcoal-Burners’ Hut’ is the embodiment of such a conception. 
The great trees, the huge boulders, the outstretched plain, the light, 
the air, the very clouds and sky seem mighty with the majesty of years. 
They are so firmly traced, so strong, so enduring, that the first six 
days of creation might have given them birth, and fifty centuries 
passed over them since, without crippling their power, dimming their 
splendor, or ruffling their repose. I know of no painter save Rousseau 
who ever conceived this phase of nature. It is a novel, a poetic, a 
majestic conception which borders on the sublime. We occasionally feel 
the same sense of power in the High Alps and on the ocean, the feeling 
of the everlasting permanence and might which Rousseau has painted in 
this picture. The conception is great and the manner of its revelation 
to us is in perfect correspondence therewith. Strong features alone 
appear, and minor details are suppressed. The brush has been 
handled with a quick and almost careless strength, as though the 
painter might have been in a hurry to catch the vision before it van- 
ished ; but there are no false notes, no errors, no ear-marks of haste 
about it. The trained hand of Rousseau could be trusted to range 
wide, yet paint sure and true, and in no picture of his that I have seen 
has it ever appeared to better advantage.”—John C. Van Dyke, Art 
Review, December, 1887, 


Alfred Sensier, Rousseau’s friend, in his ‘‘Souvenirs sur Th. Rous- 
seau” (Paris, 1872, page Ig9), gives an account of a visit he made at the 
home of the great painter while the latter was at work on this picture. 
The translation is by Mr. William A. Coffin, the artist. Sensier says: 


‘‘T went to see him in Indian summer, in November ; his little house 
was covered with clematis, nasturtium and cobeas. . . . He 
showed me a whole collection of pictures, sketches, monotint studies, 
and compositions ‘laid in,’ which made him ready for twenty years’ 
work. He was beginning his beautiful landscape, ‘The Charcoal- 
Burners’ Hut,’ so luminous and so limpid—an effect of high noon in 
September sunshine, which he finished in 1850. He had laid it in 
with the right general effect at the first painting on a canvas prepared 
in gray tints, and after having placed his masses of trees and the lines 
of his landscape, he was taking up, with the delicacy of a miniaturist, 
the sky and the trunks of the trees, scraping with a palette-knife to 
half the depth of the painting, and retouching the masses with imper- 


ceptible subtlety of touch, It was a patient labor which finished by 
being disturbing, it was so imperceptible. 


«««Tt seems to you that I am only caressing my picture, does it not? 
That I am putting nothing on it but magnetic flourishes ? I am trying 
to proceed like the work of nature itself, by accretions which, brought 
together or united, become forces, transparent atmospheric effects, 
into which I put afterward definite accents as upon a woof of neutral 
value. These accents are to painting what melody is to harmonic 
bass, and they determine everything, either victory or defeat. The 
method is of slight importance in these moments when the end of 
the work is in sight : you may make use of anything, even of diabolical 
conjurings,’ he said to me laughingly, ‘and when there is need of it, 
when I have exhausted the resources of the colors, I use a scraper, my 
thumb, a piece of cuttle-bone, and even my brush-handles. They are 
hard trials, these last moments of the day’s work, and I often come 
out of them worn out but never discouraged.’ 

‘Then stopping short in his talk, ‘Come, let us go for a walk. I will 
show you a little of the law of growth of vegetation in nature itself.’” 


This picture was purchased by the present owner at the Secréfan 
Sale, July 1, 1889. 


Nowe: 


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH, R.A. 
172714788. 


The Blue Boy.* 


Height, 7114 inches. Width, 50% inches. 


SUPERLATIVE qualities of style, of distinction, of life, no 
less than accompanying charms of color and of execution, 
belong to this picture and place it easily among the master- 
pieces of portraiture of any school and any period. It 
marks the apogee of Gainsborough’s career, for it possesses 
the most precious characteristics of this eminent artist’s 
work and reflects all the magic of his genius. Like other 
notable portraits which might be cited, it is, first of all, 
very simple in arrangement and is fascinating for the 
very reason of its direct and frank treatment. The youthful 
subject, dressed in a so-called Vandyke costume of blue silk, 
has been painted in an attitude of unstudied grace, facing the 
spectator, his left leg slightly in advance of the right, which 
supports the weight of the body. His right arm—the hand 
holding a large hat with white feather—hangs nearly straight 
by his side; the left hand is hidden in the folds of a short 
cloak, which it holds against the left hip. Rich lace at the 

* Mr. Fuller reserves the right to place an upset price on this 
picture. 


neck and wrist, and delicate lines of embroidery at the 
edge of the closely buttoned, short-waisted jacket embel- 
lish this garment, and the soft folds of a lawn shirt are 
seen at the bend of the arm and at the waist. Lace- 
trimmed garters fasten the white silk stockings at the knee, 
and bows of the same material adorn the shoes. The color 
of this costume is always described as blue, and rightly so, 
although it has a peculiar and unique quality which may 
be more accurately designated as a composite tone of warm 
green blue. It has the depth and refinement of some of 
the similar tones found in oriental porcelains. The head 
of the boy is rich and glowing in color, solid in modelling, 
and, moreover, is drawn with extraordinary precision and 
force. The type of face is impressive in its refinement and 
in the pure boyishness of expression. The vivacious but 
limpid eyes under the angles of the delicately moulded 
eyebrows; the fine, straight nose; the firm and sensitive 
mouth, almost feminine in its sweetness—each and every 
feature has, indeed, unusual charm. Behind the figure, and 
enveloping it in full, warm tones, a landscape is broadly 
suggested, with great vaporous clouds, trees in full foliage, 
and a gleam of light along the low horizon. The whole 
picture is enveloped in a soft, mellow tone. 


FRANK D. MILLET, N.A. 


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